Hello Everyone,
I recently built a Delta Stage and featured it in my latest YouTube video.
I’ve really enjoyed using it under my AmScope microscope to view silicon wafers I extract from microchips.
I wanted to make the stage a bit more general purpose and lower the control cost a bit by using an ESP32 and FluidNC to control it. I’ve managed to get the Unipolar drivers to work and a Delta Kinematics module so I can drive the original geared motors without any modifications.
My question is on the delta kinematics themselves. I am trying to figure out the various lengths (f, rf, re, e) for use with other Delta controllers.
I read the paper and searched around but didn’t find anything except this post.
Regardless of whether you can help me or not, this is a great project and I’ve enjoyed seeing the precision that’s possible with low cost 3D printed devices like this!
-Hash
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I ended up creating an OpenFlexure Kinematic for FluidNC.
For anyone else that finds this and wants to try out a different motor controller, feel free to download the code here.
I added Flex_A, Flex_B and Flex_H along with a Scale_X and Scale_Y value to adjust varying degrees of movement on each axis. Getting the motor steps set so moving 1mm on the Z axis resulted in different distances on X and Y, so this lets you correct for that.
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Very cool video! I’ve added it to our playlist on YouTube 
We’ve done a little bit of reflection-mode imaging on the OFM, but I suspect the AmScope’s illuminator is rather nicer than the one we built…
For FluidNC, does that mean you used an ESP board plus the separate motor driver boards? I think I spotted them in your video? Given that there was some interest in an ESP32+camera based microscope, it might, at some point, be interesting for them to think about whether that same ESP32 could also handle the stage. My guess is that it would be pretty underpowered for running the whole microscope, but if you didn’t mind the control computer handling the computational heavy lifting, it might just about be enough.
Thanks! I never tried with anything other than the AmScope but did see a build from John McMaster set up for reflection-mode at DEFCON.
For FluidNC, does that mean you used an ESP board plus the separate motor driver boards?
Correct, ESP32 going to the same motor driver boards recommended on the forum (28BYJ-48)
My goal was to use pyuscope with the stage, and pyuscope is set up to control a microscopes XYZ via a GRBL CNC style controller. So getting a kinematic running in FluidNC which would translate G-code XYZ inputs to delta moves was the first goal that I finished a while back.
More recently I have been working on adding ABC axis (normally used for rotation) to the kinematic to control individual motors so the stage can be leveled or centered if needed prior to sending XYZ moves. My code is available here. The OpenFlexure.cpp file is the one of interest.
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