Sweet dreams CNC - more than one step beyond...

[sweetdream]

I had intended to add something to this log after each day at the show, but lack of sleep and a duff Mac software update killed that idea! (don't load the 10.9.5 Mavericks update, it killed my machine sufficiently to provoke reinstalling OSX!)

Back to the show;
A HUGE thank you to Graeme, an extremely talented and helpful guy who was kind enough to spend a lot of his time helping me on Saturday, (I should have that item and the plans in the post to you on Wednesday).

Also to Tim, who got collared into manning the stand with me and hung around till the end of Sunday to help me load the beast back in the car while explaining the vulgarities of making casement windows on the CNC! lol. Big, big thanks to you both!

Met up with Clive and Geoffrey and got nothing done while we chatted. lol. Geoffrey that is an incredible bit of work you did, you should put the pics up! Clive, thanks for passing on the message. Great to meet you both and glad you enjoyed the day.

I was surprised at how many Lurkers came to say hello, there must have been 30 or so. That's only the ones who mentioned seeing this build log! I heard about some great ideas and some amazing gear but was surprised to hear the reasons why they were lurking rather than posting. There was a surprising number of team builds too, where a couple of people got together to build a CNC.

Rob and Rob... thanks for the kind words, yes, it is a beast of a design. :-) I like the principal of building it stronger than the hardest material you want to cut. Yours sounds fine for doing wood but throw a pic or two up here and get the "illuminati" to take a look if you still have concerns.

There were a couple of commercial CNC designers I spoke to who were also building their own machines, but even if its your first machine, there's lots of ways you can help or inspire others to build theirs.

Sweet Dreams seemed to act as the focal point for anyone with an interest in CNC at the show and what I found nice was seeing groups of people by the stand chatting to each other about their own CNC or their plans for one. Thankfully(?) no one came up with any improvements to the design of Sweet Dreams, so I don't have to build a second one! lol.. Thanks to everyone who took the time to come and say hello and chat about their CNC or ask about Sweet dreams. I had a great time at the show, learned from some generous and amazing people and had conversations with experts about subjects I knew little about!

Going to one of these shows is highly recommended if you want to talk engineering and see some incredible work. Very inspiring.

Here's some images of workmanship to drool over;

Image 1: musical box!
Image 2: is the modified 3020 from Society of mechanical and Experimental Engineers, running on a Raspberry pi!
Image 3:scratch build radial aero engine...