The GRBL Project

When you need to join a stepper or servo motor to a screw shaft, you use a coupler. There are several types available. Jaw (Spider) Couplers Design: Two metal hubs with interlocking teeth separated by a rubber or polyurethane insert (the "spider"). Pros: Great at absorbing vibration, handles angular and parallel misalignments, cheap. Cons: Very soft spiders can introduce tiny amounts of backlash or wind-up under heavy dynamic loads. Best Use: 3D printers and DIY CNC routers u

Sigh. After the tariff whiplash of last year, I was hoping costs would stabilize. Unfortunately, tariffs never seem to go away, as evident with the recent trade war saber rattling. But, there are more pressures on pricing our products. With the continuing high cost of petroleum, shipping prices have risen. The cost of shipping a batch of boards to us from our board house has risen by over 30% in the last few months. If history is any indicator, those costs won't drop when t

One of the first features of ioSenderV2 you will probably see is Connect. You find it in the upper left-hand corner of the ioSender window. This allows you to do the obvious - connect to your grblHAL controller. But it also allows you to connect after rebooting or power cycling the board. And, it allows you to switch between Ethernet and USB. Also, the Ethernet connection dialog has a Scan option - it will scan for connected Ethernet-based boards and populate the IP address a

A new version of ioSender is near. It's still a work in progress but very usable. It was forked from the original ioSender by an old friend, Steven Wood. He has done a lot of work to make it friendly to beginners as well as experienced CNC users. It has a lot of new features, but the one you will see right off the bat is Reconnecting, an often-requested feature. You don't need to exit V2 to reconnect. You can also switch between USB and Ethernet without exiting. Another welco

Several customers have asked about using low profile sockets with the Teensy 4.1 which are reputed to be more vibration resistant than the taller sockets we include in the basic assembly kit for the T41U5XBB. ProtoSupplies has a nice kit with the Teensy, low profile pins and sockets. This does not supplant the basic assembly kit (AKA USB assembly kit) that we sell. So, if you want low profile sockets, you will still need to order the T41U5XBB with the Assembly Kit. Courtesy o

There seems to be a lot of confusion (and a range of prices) surrounding the WizNet W5500-based Ethernet module we use for the RP23CNC. Hopefully, this will help clear some of that up. When WizNet introduced the W5500 networking chip, they also introduced an evaluation module, the Wiz550io. It was rather large and had an odd arrangement of pins - 6 on one side and 8 on the other. But it was popular because it allowed adding Ethernet to a design via SPI, and the designer didn'

DIN Rails are an excellent resource for system builders, offering flexible organization for electronics cabinets. Many devices, such as power supplies, relays, and conditioning circuits, can be mounted easily without the need for drilling holes. However, the components that come with these rails often have a premium price. Moreover, adapters are necessary for mounting components that lack a DIN Rail interface. The good news is that if you have access to a 3D printer, you can

Brookwood Design makes 2 motion controller boards: the ultra fast Teensy 4.1 based T41U5XBB and the economical (but still fast) RP23CNC. This blog discusses mounting them using standard, readily available and inexpensive 35 mm DIN Rail hardware. DIN Rail mounting is very good way to organize an electronics cabinet. The DIN Rail brackets snap onto the rails and can be moved around with ease. A vast number of devices come with DIN Rail mounts and there are a lot of 3D printable

I have been an online seller of hobbyist electronic products for 6 years now. When I created my online store, I looked at several options and wound up going with Tindie. The primary reason was it did not require any ongoing payments and it used PayPal which I was familiar with. They took their payment from sales in the form of a transaction fee (3.5%) as well as a tindie fee (5%). Receiving the proceeds of sales was easy, just hit the Disbursement button and your money (min

I have been selling my products on Tindie.com since 2020. Six years in June, tempus fugit. While it is a bit of a barebones operation, Tindie worked ok for me. I sold thousands of units. Many customers became friends. I learned a lot about what people are doing in the CNC world and learned a lot about online retailing. It was a good experience. But, that all changed in April, 2026. Tindie, owned by Supplyframe, was sold with no announcement to an anonymous buyer. The site