Some existing products can often lend themselves to recycling or upcycling into more interesting and useful devices, and one of these is the typical inkjet printer. This process has been demonstrated by "Shane" who has converted an old HP 2500C A3 printer into a CNC machine powered by an Arduino.
By using some of the existing hardware in the printer, he only needed to add drawer runners for the X- and Z-axis - and the original printer buttons are used as part of the replacement user interface. A quick demonstration of the CNC is shown in the following video:
Often people come up with a project, and find the electronics is the easy part - and the enclosure quite difficult. So if you have an idea, consider what existing things could be used as an enclosure or housing as Shane did. For more on his project visit the detailed blog. And for more, we're on twitter and Google+, so follow us for news and product updates as well.
If you're interested in experimenting with Arduino for your own inventions - but not sure how to learn - order one of our Experimenter's Kit for Arduino:
The package includes a wide variety of parts, sensors and modules including: a servo motor, lights, buttons, switches, sound, sensors, breadboard, wires and more. Furthermore a Freetronics Eleven Arduino-compatible board is included to make this an extensive hobby experimenter, inventor and starter kit.