Build it up to break it down again

I am going under the knife for ACL surgery in under a week, so I've been putting in hours on the CNC project like my life depended on it. I'm gonna be on the couch for about a week straight, and I'd like to be happy with where the project sits during that time.

 

 

 

I have tightened up the x and y axes, and mounted the stepping motors and drive screws. I am using a 3 axis kit from xylotex That kit interprets signals coming from the computer's parallel port into pulses that move the motors. Just tonight I set up the x and y motors, tuned them, and then jogged the gantry around a bit using the keyboard! I clamped a pen to the z axis and drew out the words "love robot" etch-a-sketch style on a piece of wood. I don't have any ideas why "Love robot" was the first thing I thought of writing. If my girlfriend hears I'm making a love robot, I think she might feel threatened. Hopefully this was a message from the robot telling me that it wants to be friends. Maybe I was just high on sawdust...