Show and Tell - let us know what you're doing!

[Neale]

The title comes from a regular feature of my model engineering club where members can show projects in progress or finished. I'm posting here because I made passing reference to one of my projects in another thread. Someone asked me about it but I didn't want to clutter up that thread with that info.

I have to start by saying that I almost never make reference to work I do on my machine as very little of what I do would be of interest to others. However, it occurs to me that it might encourage other people a bit to know that a CNC router or similar isn't always about glamorous, flashy, bits of work. They are great, of course, but the bulk of the jobs I do with mine are much more mundane - but do you know? It's really useful to have a machine to help you do the boring, ordinary, stuff as well as the odd "good enough to put on the wall" projects. In the same way that I posted about my router - it looks like a crock of s**t but it works - it might help others understand just what machines like this can do and I'm all for encouraging people to jump in at the deep end.

Anyway, first project 'cos that's the one I was asked about is a wooden clock. Hands up on this one - I bought the design from someone else as the requirement arrived in the workshop a couple of weeks before Christmas and there was not time to design/develop something of my own. The design I bought was this one (http://woodentimes.com/SEXTUS/Sextus.html), one of a range of clocks from this designer. Again, because of time constraints I bought the high-grade plywood and hardware fittings kit from the same guy, although there is nothing particularly exotic about any of it and I have even found at least one source of the "aircraft-grade" plywood not too far from me. I bought the design as a set of DXF files for all the CNC-cut components, loaded them into Vectric Vcarve (not Fusion 360 this time as it is all pretty straightforward 2.5D toolpath stuff) and generated gcode for my machine, I had already bought a couple of brand new cutters especially for it to try to avoid any tearing or splintering on the ply, and in fact this stuff machined really well. Even then I made another little whoopsy in the CAM phase. I watched the machine start cutting pieces from the first panel and though to myself, "that seems to be going quite fast." Then I looked at the Mach3 screen - target feed rate was 60000mm/min. I had overlooked the fact that Vcarve, when you are setting up feed rates, has a drop down box for units. I had not noticed that this defaulted to mm/sec - and I had set it to 1000. Very conservative as I wasn't sure how this stuff would cut, especially with a lot of detail for things like gear teeth - but in fact it topped out at my machine's limit of 5000mm/min and didn't bat a eyelid. So, I learnt something there.

Cutting the clock parts is actually quite quick. I won't mention the fact that I carefully set the tool to one corner of the work to work coordinate zero but forgot to then hit the zero axis buttons on the Mach3 screen. Whoops - I wasn't going to mention that... Anyway, I found some lesser quality ply in the workshop to make a replacement of the gear wheel that was spoiled but took the opportunity to modify the design slightly so that the spokes are actually in the form of my grandson's initial. Nice to have personalised it.

Assembly takes rather more time - although a second one would go faster. Actually setting up. tweaking, adjusting, etc, took quite a long time. It was probably nearly two weeks before I had it running reliably and keeping fair time (it gains around 3mins per day, which is probably about as good as technology like this will get - if I want better I buy a quartz clock from a market stall for a couple of quid). Clocks are very sensitive to friction and getting the bearings just right, adjusting the pallet shape where the pallets pick up the teeth of the escape wheel, etc, took time. In the end I actually read up on the characteristics of this kind of escapement to better understand just how to adjust it, but it runs pretty well now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLVJj5_jos0&feature=youtu.be
Just to prove that it does exist and run (and you can tell it's mine by looking very carefully for the wheel with the initials as spokes!) It's fixed to a temporary board just so that I could hang it on a door - in the first couple of weeks it was up and down on a regular basis for adjusting. Sorry about the background noise on the video clip. Other people put all sorts of different background music on (which I have to admit often has me reaching for the mute button...) but this background was the television and completely accidental Your turn to reach for the mute button, guys!

My wife likes it enough that I shall be building at least one more, the next one having a bit more fancy wood and some nice engraving. That will be a lot easier now I know (more or less...) what I'm doing.

[JAZZCNC]

Should rename this thread " Show n Tell " so others can do the same.! . . (And I'm not taking the Piss either..Lol)

[Neale]

Hey, if you can't take a joke you shouldn't have joined! Anyway, title modified. Join in, guys - this is just the place for the "it might not be pretty but it does the job!" projects.

[Lee Roberts]

That looks ace Neale, you've just reminded me about these clocks and the desire I had at the time to make one once my machine was up and running so thanks for sharing.

To embed video in a post its: [v i d e o]YOUTUBE URL HERE[/v i d e o]

Example:
[.video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1234567[/video.]

No spaces in the word video though.

EDIT: We do have a Woodworking Project Showcase (http://www.mycncuk.com/forums/276-Woodworking-Project-Showcase) section and one for metalworking too.

[Neale]

Lee - I had a quick look for a category that was more relevant but obviously missed it. Feel free to move this, though, if that makes sense and before too many people find it!

I don't often post links to videos so just took the route I knew. I'll try to remember the proper way for the future!

Thanks.

[Kitwn]

That's really spooky Neale. Guess what clock I made first? Not that surprising perhaps, many people have commented on how mesmerizing the Sextus design is. Mine is just made from the bog standard ply from the local hardware, It's a 1900Km round trip from here to the nearest shop with anything better.
I've put a couple of videos below. Please feel free to laugh at the machine that made it. There isn't much of that little beastie left in the current version.

I'm also using the rather splendid 'Gearotic' software from Art Fennerty, original creator of MACH3, to design gear trains for my own electric clocks. Weight driven wooden clocks are an interesting project but have the problems of having to be wound every day, are innacurate and the weight (3Kg-ish) tends to distort the frame and stop them working after a while. They're also expensive to send through the post if you don't want the recipient to have to source their own lead.
The third link is to a video I've linked before. This is the prototype of an electric clock which can be locked to either a quartz crystal or, as shown in this video, a GPS receiver which means it runs with absolute accuracy. My current problem is how to make wheels (heaven forbid you use the word 'gears' in the presence of an horologist!) out of hardwood rather than mere ply. Whe the grain is tangential to the wheel the teeth tend to chip while being cut so I've bought a bandsaw and made a jig for cutting pieces for 12-piece segmented blanks that have radial grain all round.

I realise there are specialist showcases elsewhere on the forum, but perhaps this is a good place to show off some of the smaller, less flashy stuff as Neale suggests and perhaps also take a relaxed attitude to veering off topic and chatting a bit. The MYCNCUK alternative to meeting down the pub after a serious discussion about choosing the right drivers for a new machine. Maybe Dean can bring the Guiness?


https://vimeo.com/224014481

https://vimeo.com/240094760

https://vimeo.com/343781598

Kit

[Kitwn]

My most recent project, the reason the new clock hasn't got very far, is a table-top weaving loom for my wife. She already has a 70cm wide folding model made by Louet but wanted the 40cm version as well due an accute attack of OLAD (Obsessive Loom Aquisition Dissorder), a common afliction among dedicated weavers. Rather than force her to save up the considerable asking price I decided to build one for her as a Christmas present. It wasn't quite finished in time but is now working nicely.

The design is a blatant rip-off of the original with changes to cope with it being a one-off DIY project without the fancy moulded parts and I changed the sizes of timber used to match the range of DAR Tasmanian Oak available from Bunnings Warehouse. One of the reasons for it not being finished in time was that production could not start until after a visit to Perth in November from which I returned with the car stuffed full of a 12 inch bandsaw and and a surprising amount of timber which left no room for passengers. The wife and her mother flew there and back anyway so I was safe!

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[AndyUK]

accute attack of OLAD (Obsessive Loom Aquisition Dissorder), a common afliction among dedicated weavers.

Oh god that sounds worryingly familiar. Despite wifey still being under 30, the number of weaving/beading/lace making related contraptions in the house seriously terrifies me.

[magicniner]

I made a BT30/ER11 drag engraving tool holder last week


https://youtu.be/L5PoiOCIXlw


Ingredients List -
A BT30 10mm Endmill Holder
An ER11 chuck on 10mm shank turned to length and with a slot milled in the side for combined retention, rotation prevention and travel limit by the BT30 Endmill Holder's grub screw (screw adjusted to just allow vertical float)
One spring
A diamond drag engraving cutter from my Gravograph IM3 pantograph machine
A dash of low strength Locktite for the Endmill Holder retaining screw.
A drop of Way Oil on the ER11 collet chuck's 10mm shank

[Kitwn]

Oh god that sounds worryingly familiar. Despite wifey still being under 30, the number of weaving/beading/lace making related contraptions in the house seriously terrifies me.

Sounds familiar! Christie does weaving, lace making (I used to make bobbins for her to sell on her website), knitting (we live in the tropics!!), crochet, cross-stitch, quilting and occasionally plays the harp as well. Oh, and we're messing about with resin based jewellery as well. We're looking to retire to Tasmania in a couple of years but will need a large 4-bedroom house with a double garage just for the two of us to have enough room for our hobbies!

Could be worse I suppose. At least we've never had any of those nasty, smelly, expensive child things.

[Neale]

I made a BT30/ER11 drag engraving tool holder last week



Don't know much about drag engraving but curious about it - does the engraving tip not need to turn to follow the direction of drag? Or is the tip shaped to cut in any direction? Or does it have a swivel in it?

[magicniner]

Don't know much about drag engraving but curious about it - does the engraving tip not need to turn to follow the direction of drag? Or is the tip shaped to cut in any direction? Or does it have a swivel in it?

No.
Diamond Drag Engraving is entirely unrelated to Drag Knife, the Diamond tip is conical, in no way directional and is not required to rotate at all.

This is a quick test to ensure it works as designed, lettering is 5mm high
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[Neale]

My wife is an embroiderer/felt maker. I also earn brownie points by making odds and sods for her use. These are typical of a set of trays that I made to fit in the widely-available range of "Really Useful Boxes", of which she has quite a lot.One of these boxes full of reels of thread wastes a lot of time whenever you are looking for one in particular so I designed and made the stacking trays. I like using the tab-and-slot method of construction, and I try to ensure that all loads are taken mechanically by the tab design. These ones use small dabs of superglue just to stop them falling apart although there is little load taken by the glue. Each tray has a slot in the base plus matching cutout in the central divider so that the handle on the one below has somewhere to go. This is also helps when you just have them stacked on the table as they don't slide off each other. Top tray in each box doesn't have the projecting handle just so it fits in the plastic boxes. I designed them in Fusion 360 using parameters for key dimensions so that it is relatively easy to create the different sizes. I worried a lot about corner clearance in the slots - can't make square corners with a round tool - and eventually settled for the fillets as seen here. Other projects have used a smaller cutter and so the corner fillets are a little less obtrusive. However, these weren't designed with aesthetics high on the agenda - more "what can I knock up quickly!"
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Really, this kind of thing just emphasises my point about how useful a CNC router is for fairly ordinary projects - would have taken ages to do something like by hand.

[Kitwn]

My wife is an embroiderer/felt maker. I also earn brownie points by making odds and sods for her use.

Really, this kind of thing just emphasises my point about how useful a CNC router is for fairly ordinary projects - would have taken ages to do something like by hand.

Neale,
Christie used to make beautiful silk and nuno-felted scarves and shawls and played with needle-felting for a while. I even made an animated film with needle felted characters! I'm definitely with you on the brownie-points and you might recognise the joints on the boxes below. The wavy stick is used for decorative weaving.

It can save a lot of hand work doing this stuff on the CNC router, especially if you don't have a range of other machine tools like a table saw for example and we have been known to design stuff on the laptop over a glass of something in the evening and then I can cut the parts next morning. Very civilised!

Magicniner,
I like the engraver holder, very neat. For the benefit of other readers, I bought an engraver tool which already includes the springloaded holder and fits into a 12mm collet. Just remember NOT to start the spindle when using it.


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[AndyUK]

I used to make bobbins for her to sell on her website

Huh I was asked about exactly this the other day. Another hobby she has is glass fusing and bead making; apparently spangled lace bobbins fetch a high price these days, so if I could produce the bobbin she'd do the rest.

Obviously my cutting experience is very limited with my original conversion not really even coping with soft woods (it was an old scanning water phantom, so very weak). I guess it could be done by just flipping the work, but I did wonder if it was a 4th axis job. Would love to hear more about your method? Did you CNC them or just manually turn them?


Could be worse I suppose. At least we've never had any of those nasty, smelly, expensive child things.

Hah.

[Kitwn]

Andy,
I turned the lace bobbins by hand. That was long before I got involved in CNC stuff. In fact in 2004 we spent our last ever weekend living in the UK attending a course on bobbin turning and one of the first household appliances we bought in the new country was a lathe! In our early years in Australia C used to have an online shop selling bobbins nd other lace-making supplies, some that I made here but most were imported from the UK made by Stuart Johnson (who ran the course we attended along with David Springett) or Chris Parsons.

Hand turning wood down to a diameter of 3mm takes a steady hand but once you get the knack it's easy enough with the right timber. Mass production requires a well thought out process and the right tools but nothing expensive or complicated. If you really want to look into making a 4th axis and producing bobbins I'd be happy to give you the benefit of my hand-turning experience. A 4th axis for such light work would be pretty simple. The main design requirement would be a fast turn-round time for swapping out pieces.

[Neale]

No.
Diamond Drag Engraving is entirely unrelated to Drag Knife, the Diamond tip is conical, in no way directional and is not required to rotate at all.

This is a quick test to ensure it works as designed, lettering is 5mm high


Thanks, Nick - my interest is a bit more towards drag knife work (and I'll get one of those set up on my machine one day) but it's always interesting to see the art of the possible, especially with relatively simple bits of kit. Nice job, especially remembering the size of the lettering. What's the material you were cutting?

[Neale]

Christie used to make beautiful silk and nuno-felted scarves and shawls and played with needle-felting for a while. I even made an animated film with needle felted characters! I'm definitely with you on the brownie-points and you might recognise the joints on the boxes below. The wavy stick is used for decorative weaving.

It's a good technique - I've made a little set of drawers (toolmaker's cabinet style) to hold cutters and suchlike and the drawers are really easy to assemble and fit the cabinet well enough that they are all interchangeable - no fitting required. For me, though, the technique illustrates an important idea - when faced with an engineering necessity (like the need for these corner fillets) then make it a desirable aesthetic feature and be blatant about it! Reminds me of something I read about the original minis many years ago (cars, not skirts...) Issigonis found that the spot welding machines of the era were too big and clumsy to easily spot weld the usual in-turned flanges between body panels in such a small car. So he turned them outwards and stuck a bit of chrome trim over them to make them a "feature". Dreadful rust traps, of course, but that was a standard feature of just about every car of that period.

[cropwell]

Go on Kit, Go the full Jacquard ! She's worth it !

[Neale]

Not so difficult to do, I suspect - I visited a weaver in the Outer Hebrides a year or two back who was using a floor loom, but, in effect, bolted on the side there was a solenoid-operated mechanism for operating the heddle levers (sorry - full technical terms escape me!). The solenoids were operated by software running on an Apple Mac (I think it was). So, I'm waiting for the first Mach3-controlled loom to appear in this forum! Punched cards are so nineteenth century - use Mach3 and take a giant leap into the twentieth:smile:

[cropwell]

I made this heated case for harmonicas a couple of years back. The joints were made using an Inkscape add-on (tabbed box maker). they just needed a bit of fettling to make them fit nicely.

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[cropwell]

Not so difficult to do, I suspect - I visited a weaver in the Outer Hebrides a year or two back who was using a floor loom, but, in effect, bolted on the side there was a solenoid-operated mechanism for operating the heddle levers (sorry - full technical terms escape me!). The solenoids were operated by software running on an Apple Mac (I think it was). So, I'm waiting for the first Mach3-controlled loom to appear in this forum! Punched cards are so nineteenth century - use Mach3 and take a giant leap into the twentieth:smile:

I think they are just called warp lifters. You would need hundreds of solenoids though to get ant decent width of cloth.

There is some software out called Wovn, for designing and producing cloth on a hobby jacquard.

[Neale]

I think they are just called warp lifters. You would need hundreds of solenoids though to get ant decent width of cloth.

There is some software out called Wovn, for designing and producing cloth on a hobby jacquard.

Ah, yes, there are different levels of sophistication with the punched card systems. The Jacquard silk picture weaving does indeed use many individually-controlled warp threads. I admit that I was thinking more of conventional textile weaving using maybe 8-12 warp threads to form the pattern but repeated across the width of the fabric. The Harris tweed weavers with their Hattersley looms have some card-based (actually small metal plates linked into a chain) patterns that are only 4 "cards" long although some are much longer. I remember seeing a Jacquard silk loom at a museum in (I think) Manchester where the attendant told me that they were frightened to run it too much; it was working but if a thread broke or they eventually reached the end of the warp thread on the drum, there was no-one left who knew how to rethread it! Possibly an exaggeration, but I doubt that there would have been many people who could do it.

Anyway, this (https://www.toika.com/en/tuote/computer-looms/)was the kind of thing I had in mind.

Nice little box, BTW, Rob.

[cropwell]

The box is just plywood, my next harmonica heated box will be perspex with fused mitred joints. I have yet to play with vacuum forming for the interior moulding.
I gave the original to my harmonica teacher (long term loan) and I intend to swap it out with Mk2 before next winter.

This is what I was thinking in terms of cnc looms:-

https://www.digitalweaving.no/tc2-loom/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK6IqovdKLA

But they don't have the charm of the working original Jacquards I saw in Lyon about 7 years ago.

Cheers.

R

PS don't show HI or you will have your next project. (Might be a good exhibit on the SMEE stand).

[Kitwn]

Funny you mention automatic looms, 'cos I've already made one. The four shaft prototype at least. I'll try and find the video later on. It used one Arduino MEGA for the controller plus one NANO, stepper driver and motor for each shaft. Not sure if I'll ever build the finished machine, depends on the whims of the weaver and how big a house we decide to buy when we finally retire to Tasmania.

A true Jacquard loom has separate control of each warp thread so can make any pattern imaginable but is very complex as that video of the TC2 Neale linked to shows. Most looms have several shafts (4,8,16 being common), each of which lifts every 2nd, 4th etc. thread. Much simpler but the patterns are more limited, though that's a relative term as I can see what's possible with an 8 shaft loom as I type. This is the type of loom that repeats a pattern across the fabric.

The mechanism that automatically lifts the shafts ina specific series of patterns is called a dobby, derived from 'Do-Boy' since the earliest mechanism was a boy perched on top of the loom lifting shafts as required. Harry Potter comes to mind. Non-computer dobbys use pegs in a series of bars to decide which shafts get lifted for each pick (throw) of the shuttle and the bars are moved on at each pick. This can be a purely manual powered machine, the dobby is there simpy to automate the lifting of a complex repeating pattern of shafts so the eaver doesn't have to remember the complex sequence of foot work required. The loom I built which had a sequence of shaft combinations stored in an Arduino's memory and used stepper motors to lift the shafts was effectively a dobby loom, though the original requirement was simply to remove the work normally done by the weaers feet which causes too much back pain for my wife.

Edit: Found the video! Note there is no sound.
This shows the four shaft prototype but the frame is designed to fit eight shafts. The motor mounting parts were cut on the CNC router. Despite the rather Heath Robinson construction, this turned out quite well and proved the overall concept. The countermarch design has a sprung backbeam which means the tension on each thread is constant at all times. The Arduino NANO controlling each motor was progammed with appropriate accel/decel values to ensure a quick but smooth action and each shaft moves a different amount to compensate for the spacing so that the shed (the opening between the threads through which the shuttle runs) produced is wide and even.

https://vimeo.com/390241963

[Kitwn]

Thanks, Nick - my interest is a bit more towards drag knife work (and I'll get one of those set up on my machine one day) but it's always interesting to see the art of the possible, especially with relatively simple bits of kit.

Yet another rabbit hole we've been down is screen-printed T-shirts and bought a Zing Air machine which uses a small drag knife for cutting out the stencils. It comes with the approriate design/control software.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39t_R98CdZA

[Doddy]

Never before have I wanted my wife to take up.... erm... making cloth. Fascinating machine!

[Kitwn]

Never before have I wanted my wife to take up.... erm... making cloth. Fascinating machine!

Even though we live in the tropics, the scarves Christie weaves on the simplest of her 3 looms sell quite well in our local craft shop and are quicker to make than you might think. Weaving is one of those hobbies that can be self-funding with a little effort, as might owning a CNC router if I can get it up to scratch.

The daft thing is, all this stuff I've been doing is just spin-offs of one starting project. C suggested I try timelapse photography of the night sky. That led to learning about stepper motors for a camera motion control dolly to make the results more interesting and everything else is just another application of stepper motors and the software that drives them, including the CNC router that makes the parts for all the other projects!!!!

[phill05]

After seeing Jaz throw out the gauntlet,
If your machine hasn't passed the Aztec test then it's not a real machine yet....:joker: I missed this 1st time round so will add my contribution.

These were made for my wife who is blind,

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All were designed in Vectric Aspire the wooden items cut on my home built machine the stonework was cut on a machine I installed at a stone company,but I've not cut the JAztec plate yet.

Phill

[Kitwn]

Lovely work Phill.
Vectric looks to be the go-to software for this kind of decorative work.

[JAZZCNC]

After seeing Jaz throw out the gauntlet, I missed this 1st time round so will add my contribution.

Very nice work you done there well done..:toot: . . But you can only be in the Aztec gang if you built your own machine so your still not coming in...:hysterical::joker:

[ngwagwa]

I have been machining moulds for making fishing lures. I am well impressed with the improvement after fitting digital stepper drivers and moving to UCCNC.

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These tools still scare me though.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1OT1GJVUSE

[JAZZCNC]

I have been machining moulds for making fishing lures. I am well impressed with the improvement after fitting digital stepper drivers and moving to UCCNC.

These tools still scare me though.

You are going a bit too slow and the tool stick out is way too far. You'll get an even better finish if you lower the stickout and up the feed.

[ngwagwa]

You are going a bit too slow and the tool stick out is way too far. You'll get an even better finish if you lower the stickout and up the feed.

The cutter is a 2mm extended neck ball nose and the 4mm shank is flush with the collet. I have to use a 20mm long tool as the next size down (10mm) is too short. As for the feed rate I run them at the recommended 210mm/min but in this case as the slot is only 2.059 wide I prefer to reduce the feed

[JAZZCNC]

The cutter is a 2mm extended neck ball nose and the 4mm shank is flush with the collet. I have to use a 20mm long tool as the next size down (10mm) is too short. As for the feed rate I run them at the recommended 210mm/min but in this case as the slot is only 2.059 wide I prefer to reduce the feed

OK I understand with the shank but if all it's doing is the finish pass like what your showing then you could easily go well past the recommended feed rate as the WOC/DOC is so tiny. There is hardly any tool pressure on it so it's not likely to break.!
Regards the Slot then I'd Cam that up as a separate feature because what's the point of slowing the whole job just for that one area where you need to be careful.?

Recommendations are ok but you have to assess to each job and I can see that your slowing the job down and probably getting a worse finish because of it due to running too slow. Will be worth you experimenting with Feeds and slightly different strategies for areas like slots etc.

[ngwagwa]

OK I understand with the shank but if all it's doing is the finish pass like what your showing then you could easily go well past the recommended feed rate as the WOC/DOC is so tiny. There is hardly any tool pressure on it so it's not likely to break.!
Regards the Slot then I'd Cam that up as a separate feature because what's the point of slowing the whole job just for that one area where you need to be careful.?

Recommendations are ok but you have to assess to each job and I can see that your slowing the job down and probably getting a worse finish because of it due to running too slow. Will be worth you experimenting with Feeds and slightly different strategies for areas like slots etc.

The video is actually the roughing cut and at the speeds and feeds I am using I get a good enough finish that I don't bother with a finishing cut.

The reason I am machining the slot and the blend radius is in places the radius is too deep to cut with a standard cutter. What I do is cut as close to the slot as I can with a standard cutter then finish the blend radius while I am cutting the slot.

I have been quite suprised how much these extended cutters will bend before they snap.

[Kitwn]

Rather than continue hi-jacking Joe's thread I thought this belonged here:
Thanks to Jazzcnc sending me the g-code I can now apply for membership of the Aztec Club. The result is 400mm in diameter cut on 12mm MDF, I used to 60 degree cutter option that Dean sent me. It took just shy of 4 hours to cut. The cooling water for the spindle got to about 40C but no hotter. The whole machine was happy to run continuously for that long without any problems.
Now I know that it works so well I might try some more attractive timber.

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[JAZZCNC]

Welcome to the club...:beer::toot::smiley_simmons::applause:

That's excellent quality for MDF, you must have better MDF down under but I suppose it's much drier.!

You can see why it's a good test of the machine.!! . . . You should see the mess a badly setup machine does of it.!!

[Kitwn]

Thanks, Mate! I still want to do the square and circle tests, but that will have to be tomorrow.

[Kitwn]

After proving the machine could do a decent jon of the calendar I tried a much simpler but more telling test of it's basic geometry. I cut a 150mm disc and a 150.4mm circular hole out of 6mm MDF to see if the disc would rotate in the hole. Does it cut circles or ovals?

The disc was a close fit in the hole and rotates 360 degrees with a little variation of stiffness as it goes. My digital calipers claim the disc diameter varies between 149.8 and 150.2mm. Not the height of modern engineering but certainly acceptable for this low budget machine and adequate for my wood-cutting needs.

Accuracy could probably be improved by looking at areas where stifness could be improved and spending some time repeating the alignment procedure from last week with some finer shim material. For now I just want to get on with making stuff with it!

Kit

[Sterob]

Rather than continue hi-jacking Joe's thread I thought this belonged here:
Thanks to Jazzcnc sending me the g-code I can now apply for membership of the Aztec Club. The result is 400mm in diameter cut on 12mm MDF, I used to 60 degree cutter option that Dean sent me. It took just shy of 4 hours to cut. The cooling water for the spindle got to about 40C but no hotter. The whole machine was happy to run continuously for that long without any problems.
Now I know that it works so well I might try some more attractive timber.

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Very nice Kit!

[Kitwn]

Very nice Kit!

Thanks Sterob! it came out well.

[Kitwn]

This project has been on and off the back burner more times than granny's kettle, but I have at last built the final prototype of the circular clock mentioned way back up this thread, now called the Orion (getting the right name is critical, obviously). Now I'm confident the design works reliably and can actually be cut on the router and put together fairly easily I'm going to move on to building some in Australian hardwoods and see if I can make a quid.

The clock is powered by a standard USB phone charger and is controlled by an Arduino microcontroller. Despite all the moving parts being made of wood it runs with the accuracy of a quartz watch.

https://vimeo.com/614929644

[Ollie78]

Nice work Kitwn, it has such a relaxing sound to the machanism. Could be really fancy in various shiny hardwoods.

Ollie

[JAZZCNC]

I would blow that bloody thing off the wall, I hate ticking clocks, lives flashing by fast enough without those bleeding things reminding me...:hysterical:

But nice job kit.:applause:

[Kitwn]

I would blow that bloody thing off the wall, I hate ticking clocks, lives flashing by fast enough without those bleeding things reminding me...:hysterical:

But nice job kit.:applause:

This clock has a calming 60 bpm tick to remind you of your mother's resting heart beat from when you were in the womb! You can fit felt pads to quieten it though.

And I agree about life flashing by too quickly!

[Kitwn]

I decided to enter this year's Great Guitar Build Off to give myself a kick up the backside and get on with an idea I've been mulling over for a while. Here's the final entry video.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNZ7ELsouHs&t=346s

[AndyGuid]

Thanks Kit for another interesting and informative video.

[AndyUK]

Fantastic build and video Kit! There are a number of techniques I'm going to have to emulate now; particularly the epoxy inlay and the photograph tracing to get the design in.

Fingers crossed for your entry.