Video: CNC machine plays “Still Alive”

This man has configured his CNC router to play “Still Alive”, from Portal. Hacksay says he “didn’t just tell the motors to spin at the correct speeds directly though. he computer the 3d vectors necessary to produce the notes.” I have no idea what that means, since the machine doesn’t appear to be carving anything out, but just spinning its motors. Still, impressive. Who knew CNC machines had polyphony?

1. [rak0ribz]

   Lots of stepper motor/drive circuitry combinations produce noise when they’re engaged; I think the guy “just” mapped MIDI to distance/rate vectors that ran his 3 axis motors at the correct speed and duration for the desired note. Hackaday doesn’t mention this anywhere, but it would be interesting to see whether he did this programmatically or manually.

2. [Shannon]

   The C64 1541 floppy drive could be manipulated into singing as well –
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gnMgmlKi_o

3. [Shannon]

   Scanners too–
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcN9t-x5CDQ

4. [Anonymous]

   now that is fricken awesome!

5. [Zan]

   What you are actually hearing are the stepper motors. While more expensive CNC machines use large servomotors, cheaper CNC machines use stepper motors. Stepper motors only run at one speed, but slower rates are achieved by pulsing them . The pulsing is usually done in the 10Mhz-1.5Khz range, which corresponds quite nicely with the musical range.

   In normal use, such a CNC machine makes random R2D2ish noises. By specifying a vector and feed rate, he can make the stepper motors “hum” at any given frequency. The polyphony comes from the X, Y, and Z axis stepper motors.

6. [Anonymous]

   I’m guessing the polyphony is achieved by using each axis to produce a tone

   as for steppers running at one speed. I’m not sure where you heard that, it’s not true. It would make for a pretty rubbish cnc machine that was unable to produce curves.
   Steppers will run as fast as you step the pattern until you reach their slew rate

   anyway this is awesome :p

7. [Agies]

   If you dig a little deeper than the Hack A Day page you’ll find the blog entry where the guy explains just exactly how he did it. It’s here.

8. [JoeKickass]

   When I saw C+C Music Factory I expected to hear “EVERYBODY DANCE NOW!”

   …this was better.

9. [richardnixon]

   Here is another musical machine. A Renault Formula 1 motor playing “God Save the Queen” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XR7OpM2Ufk

10. [Dillenger69]

    Wow, this is actually musical, unlike the tesla coil “music” that’s been posted previously.

    Most cool.

11. [Dean]

    What it means is that, although the CNC mill isn’t cutting anything now, the 3D software has a representation of a shape that it’s cutting out when it plays the music. In the write up for this project, the author suggests that a hint to his next project is that he can move the notes to different motors and still maintain the correct tone and melody. This implies that it is possible for him to make a shape that represents the playing of the song as played by the CNC mill.

12. [hypatia]

    One of the HackLabTO members did a similar thing with our CNC laser cutter:

    http://hacklab.to/archives/another-musical-variation/

13. [PaulR]

    Wow!! The utter coolness of this just moved me to tears.

    All we need to complete this is a video with a representation of the vectors being carved out in space.

14. [bex]

    sorry but i am going to call fake, seeing as it was posted on April 1