Part of being able to mill/lathe indoors means having a good safety system set up. When I first purchased my Taig Mill and Sherline Lathe, I wanted to enclose them to catch any shrapnel. Since I started playing with Misumi parts for my MendelMax, I thought I could make a great enclosure using it. I got all the pieces in and got some 1/4 polycarb from a local plastic supplier. You can see the results below. I think they turned out nice. At some point I will post a BOM for the enclosures.
A friend asked me if I could bore out a wheel adapter for a tire machine on my lathe. I hadn’t done much steel work, but figured it was a fun thing to try out. The results turned out nicely.
I ran into a challenge recently where I didn’t have enough spare pins that could PWM on ramps. I want to add LEDs for lighting and to signify certain events. To work around the issue, I decided to make an i2c-rgb led adapter. I2C lets me have up to 127 devices. I plan to make a similar one with a mosfet for a fan.
Easter was always a fun time growing up. We dyed eggs for nearly every Easter. Now that I have children, I want to do the same. The kicker is that I want to do it with a twist. When I ran across the prospect of an Eggbot, I knew that it was perfect for the occasion. For those that haven’t seen an Eggbot, I’ve included a few pictures and videos below.
At our local hackerspace we have a waste oil heater that some of our members built. Right now we are using a stainless steel bowl for the burn plate. We needed a proper solution. To do that, we got a piece of aluminum round and needed to create a bowl in the middle with a 10 degree angle. My lathe can’t handle stock 6″ in diameter so I decided to use the mill. I drew the model, then set the operations in the CAM software. This was the first time that I milled a 3 dimensional piece, rather than just a 2.5d part. You can see the results below.
Here is one of the involute cutter forms that I recently got to be able to cut gears properly. Now I just need an arbor to mount it up.
I’ve been working on an Acme upgrade for the Prusa for a little while. Previously I threadmilled the nuts out of derlin. Today I turned down the 3/8 Acme rod on both ends. One end fits into the 608zz bearing in the MG lower end and the other fits into a coupler. Tomorrow I’ll be making a set of couplers to mount up to the motors. Venom is almost ready!
Tonight I got the wiring and configuration done for the WidgitMaster/grblShield combo. You can see a video of it running a square gcode pattern below. Next I’ll be making an enclosure for the electronics and setting up the necessary fixtures.
For my PCB Mill, I wanted to use something more portable than the SDTR-4C that I use for my Taig Mill and Sherline Lathe. I was originally planning to use a RAMPS setup, but for a few reasons I went a different way. I won’t go into it here, but may later. Below is a picture of the grblShield mounted on an Arduino Duemilanove. Its running the latest grbl firmware. I’m driving a nema17 taken off my old cupcake. I’m using a laptop power supply to make it lighter and more portable.
Because this Dell power supply uses a strange connector, I’ve rigged the remote wires to power up and and connected the wires manually. I’ll find a molex connector that I can make work soon.
Lastly, here is a video of one stepper running.
I’m putting the finishing touches on the widgitmaster router that I bought long ago. I started by turning down an acme screw to replace one that was missing in the package. Then I had to make 2″ couplers because the nema 23 steppers had short shafts. Finally, I needed to mount my Wolfgang spindle to it. Unfortunately the wolfgang adapter had holes for 3/16 screws which wouldn’t work with the small t-slots on the widget master mini. I thought about making a new mount plate, but decided against it because I’d like one mount plate that works with any of my mills. My solution was to make spacers with a rim so that it could take 6-32 screws. If I decide to mount that spindle on my Taig, I can just remove the spacers and use a different pair of screws. Below are the fruits of my labor.
