@Stefan Lochbrunner has thrown up some of his #Computer Numerical Considerations, definitely worth a look for some inspiration. Which is timely, because, if you haven't noticed, this project (at least on my front) has been sorta thrown on the back-"burner." He uses a CD/DVD part in his build, but it's not the part you'd expect. Check it out!

In other news, my Pops found this groovy thing in the recycle-bin at work:

It's made by Nikon, but doesn't have any part-numbers, but I did manage to find it via image-search, and it turns out to be a carriage for microscope slides, and has quite a bit of travel in X-Y fashion, around 5 inches in one direction, and three in the other.

It's meant to be hand-driven, but I dug through my old belts and pulleys from old printers and such and found mates for both coaxial "knurled"(?) knobs. Oddly, the two knobs have different "tooth" spacing. One is apparently common-enough that I have *several* belts of different sizes to mate with it. But the other only matches one belt in my collection, which happens to be a good 8inches in diameter. A bit excessive, but I guess it doesn't really matter.

I spent some time contemplating its use in a PCB mill... I think it could be done, but it wasn't exactly designed for too much loading. Also, the original microscope slide actually travels *under* one axis, which would be fine for PCBs, but I contemplated other mounting-methods for e.g. routing 3D things...

That foam-core stuff is handier than I expected for quick-experimenting like this! And here I thought it was just packing-material...

So, if I mount the rotary-tool at the '>' on the top piece of foam-core, then I can route within the four dots on the other, without the piece going under any axis, and with the loading being somewhat centered on the lower axis (which will be supporting the piece).

Or, yahknow, weeks later I might discover that I could flip the whole thing upside-down and it doesn't go "under" any axis at all... duh. Anyways, still need to consider adding a separate support-glider on each axis, still in the works.

In other other news, thought about using an old flatbed scanner for one axis, an inkjet printer for the other... Finally dug that scanner/printer combo I found next to the dumpster out of storage... Interestingly, it only has one glider, in the middle, so not really well suited for carrying an inkjet mechanism and rotary-tool on top. On a whim decided to press the "copy" button, and sure-enough not only did it scan fine, it also *prints* fine... in color. Dunno why it was by the dumpster, but now I have my own copy-machine!

Cool observation: Apparently they started using LEDs instead of CCFLs, so you can actually see it switching colors as it scans (or scan in green, when doing B/W).

So... where's this leave us...?

Oh, the old inkjet I took apart many months ago... turns out that thing doesn't actually have a rod-glider, the ink-carriage rides on a bent piece of metal... So, it really wouldn't take much torque to rip out the plastic that's gliding on it... And any vertical pressure (e.g. from a rotary-tool) would push it right off the glider. Another consideration.

I have two identical printers which I thought to use as one wide axis, could drive the two motors with the same motion-profile... but I'm having a hard time breaking up with these printers, they were an investment for photo-printing a while back, but they are going through the ink trying to unclog those heads...

And a yet another printer that happens to be wide-format... which, again, printed right off the bat, despite having been in storage since it was given to me as non-functional 5+ years ago. 11x17 is sure nice for things like schematics... (Nevermind I have a stack of 11x17 paper).

Soooo... now to decide whether to take things apart which are functional and useful...

If I did the two normal printers as one axis, and the wide-format mounted atop as the other, that'd be >8.5x11 work-area, which would be a decent size for actually doing things... PCBs, wood-work, and more.

And, of course, none of this is based on CD/DVD mechanisms...