Parts needed. Power supply and USB board.

[EddyCurrent]

Imagine a car engine with the table being a piston. Press a button and a geared motor does one revolution, stopped by a limit switch. This drives a crank that starts at the top, goes down, then back up, taking the table with it by way of a con rod. 'Depth of dip' is controlled by changing the height of the liquid container.
Semi automatic but cheap and easy.

[JAZZCNC]

Imagine a car engine with the table being a piston. Press a button and a geared motor does one revolution, stopped by a limit switch. This drives a crank that starts at the top, goes down, then back up, taking the table with it by way of a con rod. 'Depth of dip' is controlled by changing the height of the liquid container.
Semi automatic but cheap and easy.

Problem I see with that is it has many changes of height for the dip and these floats will require many dips so this will be slow. There needs to be some way to select the height of the dip for each colour also the paint level will be contantly changing as the paint level drops. This will need to be calculated for in the dipping process to be truely automatic process.

[ukracer]

Problem I see with that is it has many changes of height for the dip and these floats will require many dips so this will be slow. There needs to be some way to select the height of the dip for each colour also the paint level will be contantly changing as the paint level drops. This will need to be calculated for in the dipping process to be truely automatic process.

I will reply in detail later to the kind suggestions etc but I am trying to get a website running for a guy and they would just chnage the release version just on the day I started...lol

To explain why I think Jazz is right , whilst I realise a simple system like eddy describes will work, I am looking to future proof etc. "(opening up the potential whilst learning CNC commands at the same time. I had factored in the loss of depth of paint and though I would jog the float tips to the liquid and then program in 2mm for example. Instead of assuming the height of paint would remain constant. I am not going to be producing floats by the thousands but like to keep things automated to a degree..... I am actually using a drill press with manual limit stop to check everything works for now anyway ;)

Regards Andy T

[EddyCurrent]

I am not going to be producing floats by the thousands but like to keep things automated to a degree..... I am actually using a drill press with manual limit stop to check everything works for now anyway ;)

That's what I thought after watching the video, plus all the printing was done by hand anyway, if you are going to watch the machine doing it's stuff then you might as well operate it at the same time.
As for learning G code with this system, well it doesn't cover many operations.
Having said that there's nothing wrong with playing about with stuff just for the hell of it.

[ukracer]

That's what I thought after watching the video, plus all the printing was done by hand anyway, if you are going to watch the machine doing it's stuff then you might as well operate it at the same time.
As for learning G code with this system, well it doesn't cover many operations.
Having said that there's nothing wrong with playing about with stuff just for the hell of it.

Yeah I tend to do that . But some times I have a need. I found this. http://youtu.be/WKdyBZvlFXk and this http://youtu.be/SCyGM2Tp37w and while its sort of well "naff", you know what I mean. Its has given me food for thought seeing how slowly it goes when combined with thread rod etc.

Shame that adafruit he mentions is not in the UK lol Well upon checking it seems they have distributors but it appears they dont sell the hardware...(only a quick look but not a good start! lol)

[IanS1]

This might be useful for a basic Arduino set-up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEmMMosC0rk

http://www.engineeringforless.com/efl_3_axis.html