The method behind....

I just thought I'd share some images from the Melbourne Hackspace.

This is a shot of one of our members after he'd finally gotten the old 3d printer working.  I think it's an original generation makerbot.

One of the current plans at my Hackerspace is to make a low cost, extendable, buzzword compatible, laser tag game based on the Arduino chipset.

This reminded me of some old guns I had when I was a children.  The brand was Photon and they were truely awful laser tag guns.

The guns "range of 30 feet!" was more like 3 feet.  The batteries died almost instantly and you had a pretty good chance of the gun registering a hit when you tried to shoot your opponent.

Anyway, I managed to dig them out of my parent's hay-shed (no shit, one side of the hay-shed is hay, the other is old junk they haven't managed to throw out,) and we took the opportunity to do a tear-down and photograph the results.

It was pretty much as we expected.  A single IC handling the logic and tinny little tunes, a bunch of resisters horribly solded into a single board.

The last few months have been quite busy, but hopefully the end is in sight.

I have an Instructables up based around my idea for a 3d printed battery adapter that I'll be linking too soon.

I joined the local Community Hackerspace at the start of the year, adding even more projects to my already giant list.  I even gave a presentation on CNC and modeling techniques and plan to do another when we're more established.

Our watering project has had slow progress, but we're ready for a stage 2.0 beta (1.8 or something?).

I've been looking at the idea of using pressure formed papier mache to make objects.  I'll post about this soon but it's involved a lot of research and experimentation.  Not unrelated, I also need a new blender.

There's been a few new cnc router projects too, but I'm not planning on posting these until I'm happy that they work they way that's expected.

I've got a new blog up.  It's not tech related but rather a pictorial database of my personal library :)

Like most of my posts here, this covers one of the problems I've run into.

This one is do with the part lifting off the spoilboard as it gets cut.  This is my home-made version of a vacuum clamp.

I've constructed it using a "Suck it and See" methodology, where I'm using a bunch of bits I had lying around on the vague hope it all just works.  Using a 6mm piece of 1200x600 mdf as the base, I'm using 18mm X 42mm pine runners around the edge and to support the middle.

An old piece of vacuum cleaner hose runs to the middle of the board to try to maintain consistent pressure across the whole sheet.  It provides a convenient plug to hook up a "compressor" too as well.

Lots of liquid nails seals it all together.  good stuff that.

Not shown here is the top.  I had a sheet of 18mm Melamine coated chipboard that was easy to get too, so it's glued to the top.  Stage 2 will be to drill holes in that, possibly with a v-channel on the diagonal.

We gave it a "compression test" without the holes to get a tight clamp on the top surface.  The 1300w vacuum cleaner sure clamped it down, but started running hot in about 10 seconds.  I'll need some kind of shutoff or extra valve to either only run the vacuum when it's needs it or to let air in to cool the motor.

It's all very well having a giant router to play with, but occasionally you need other tools.

Over the years I've picked up a pretty good collection, mostly in the "cheap" range as that was all I could afford (obviously the giant CNC router is an exception.)

Sometimes I get a bit lucky though.  I picked up these two from a garage sale for a combined price of $70.  The ARC welder is a Goodwell (an old Australian brand) and the drop saw is a Elu PS-174.

I've found another set of photos for our planter boxes.  These were taken as we were refurbishing the  wood.

I think I've mentioned before that we chose to recycle materials from my parent's old fence.  Before we got a hold of it though, the wood was stored in their old milking-shed.  I extracted the panels from the heap they'd been thrown in using a spade.  Very high likelihood of venomous snakes around here.

The second two photos are of the processing stage.  First we used the sawbench to cut the boards to length.  This meant we could avoid the areas where the board was rotten.

Our next billy cart was another one for my eldest Nephew.

His school runs a billy cart race every two years and was actually one of the inspirations for the entire CNC project.  About 3 weeks beforehand my sister asked me if they could use one of the others I'd made.

I'd already decided to do a bit of a redesign, so I decided it was easier to start from scratch.  It was designed to be a little easier to put together, giving a boxy outline.  It's assembled using barrel nuts and bolts, to reduce the problems with screwing into the end of plywood.  The whole cart was designed to be wider and thus more stable cornering.  It was also designed for larger wheels, but I wasn't able to source them in time.

The steering mechanism was greatly improved.  There's nearly a full rotation from lock to lock, so it's very smooth to drive.

Needless to say, the boys loved it.  The competition called for two pushers and one driver, but as you can see from the video's the younger kids all got in on the drawing.

Initially, I'd decided to let the boys paint it, but we realised that time was going to be short.  A quick coat of blackboard paint turned out to be the solution, the kids quickly covered it with all sorts of pictures and any mistakes were easy to rub off!

In the end the boys had a great race.  Out of 35 competitors they came in 6th place.  The race was school wide which meant my 9year old nephew was competing against 11 and 12 year olds, so I was incredibly proud of their result.

This was a custom production for a friend.

I'd discovered the process of "halftoneing" on one of the tech blogs I read (hackaday) and was immediately curious.  I tried applying the process to several pictures I had available but nothing really appealed to me.

A few days later I showed the process to a friend.  His eye's lit up and he said "This is exactly what I want to put on the wall of my new flat!"

This particular piece started life as a plain piece of 1200x600x6mm mdf.  I then stained it with a black wood stain.

The routing was done with a simple 90degree V cutter.  It was a bit fun getting the depth right, this is a process that can only really be explained as trial and error.

From very early on, Chixor and my balcony garden was intended to be self managing.

Over the years, we've had several generations of potted plants die, not necessarily from neglect but from circumstance.  Melbourne is known to have very changeable weather and can often swing between extremes.

......ok, now it sounds like I'm making excuses.  We kill plants.  I've said it.

So when we decided to build the new boxes, we always aimed toward a self watering system.  As so many of our conversations, that ended up more and more in the realms of technology and how it can do our bidding.

As luck would have it, about a week before we built our boxes, a friend had introduced me to his ideas for an Arduino controlled project, so by the time we had the planter boxes I was well primed to apply my new-found interest.

I'm going to leave the planning post to Chixor, but I wanted to give an overall idea of the components.  That way I can focus on them individually and people will have a bit of context.

In this photo:

At the top, a servo motor controlled 4mm tap assembly and a moisture sensor from seeed studio.

In the middle, a small breadboard with a voltage regulator circuit and a 2gb micro-sd card.

When people ask me what I make, I'm, always tempted to answer just a little too truthfully.

I make dust.

Wood dust, mdf dust, plastic dust.  There are days when all I seem to do is make dust.

And this wouldn't be such a problem if it wasn't so dangerous.  MDF is particularly known to be a dangerous carcinogen. Plywood and plastic aren't much better.  Even plain old wood dust should be avoided.

So I collect this dust in my dust extractor.  But then what do I do with it.  I wish I had a good answer because quite frankly I have no idea.  My current answer is burying it in the garden but I'm sure to run out of garden eventually.

I just thought I’d share some hard learnt lessons about cutting tools.

Here in Australia, Carb-i-tool is pretty much the bees knees when it comes to buying cutting tools.  The first three tools pictured are made by them.  My other tools are imports from a US company, Cutting Tool Source.

I’m going to go through each tool individually, describe it and hopefully explain what each one is good for.

The first tool is a 1/4” 2 flute spiral compression bit.  2 flute spiral simply means it has two cutting blades spiraling up the shaft.  Compression cutting bits are bit of an odd case and the theory is they give a smooth cut on both the top and bottom of the material.  This functionality is a bit dependent on the depth of the cut and in my experience that has meant cutting at a 6mm depth (just the depth my machine starts making a hell of a lot of noise.)  This is a good bit general purpose bit.

The second tool is a V Groove bit.  These bits go to quite a sharp point and are used for engraving.  It only has a single cutting edge and is only really made for shallow cuts.  I used this bit when I engraved my “Reading Robot”.

The third tool is a 1/8” plastic cut spiral.  It has a single main spiral and a small secondary spiral pattern running it’s length to give a smooth cut on plastics.  I haven’t used this bit because the shaft is too short for my machine (when I put it in I struggle to extend past my dust shoe.)  This model has a 1/4” shaft.

The forth is a 1/4” extended length 4 flute spiral.  I imported this knowing I would need something with a bit more reach.  This is an upward spiral bit meaning it pulls the chips out of the cut, however it does produce more tool chatter as a result and the work piece moves around more.

The last is a 1/4” ballnose 4 flute spiral.  This is a shorter version of the previous bit with a ballnose end.  The ballnose is used to do 3d sculpting using the router.

You’ll notice that all my bits are in Imperial sizes, including both those made in Australia and overseas.  For some reason it’s a little difficult to get metric sizes and in any case my router collet is 1/4”.  This is a little frustrating as all the materials I’ve cut have been metric depths, meaning that slots don’t quite slot.  I actually ordered some metric sized bits from the US, but they are too small for my router and pretty much fell straight out.

All these bits are solid carbide.  Hopefully this will give me increased tool life.  Most are coated to prevent rust.

I was looking through our library of photographs the other day and I'd noticed Chixor had taken some excellent high resolution photographs of our planter boxes.

For a blog I started about our CNC router, I've been a bit minimal on the details.  It's about time that changed.

Argus (business partner is probably best description) and I finished the physical construction some time in early 2011 and have spent the following 12 months bending it to our will.

It was purchased as a kit from the US.  The kit included the electronics, all the pieces for the gantry, chains, gears, bolts and some rather difficult to follow video instructions.  Still, it saved us quite a bit of screwing around and you can get the kits at buildyourcnc.  The table it all sits on we constructed ourselves and I'll cover that in more detail in the future.

This is a 3 axis machine.  The X and Y axis are running on chains, while the Z axis uses a lead-screw.

The whole unit is quite large, about 1500mm by 3000mm (About 5' by 10').  If I had to do it all over again I'd go something smaller, simply to make it easier to work around.

At the moment we're using a Makita 900 router.  It's probably a little small for this job and we'll be upgrading it "soon" (been saying that for about 4 months).  There's a 100mm (4") hose for the dust extractor hanging off the gantry that actually does a pretty good job at collecting the dust.  It's hooked up to a 1HP dust extractor unit that seems to make the most noise in the whole arrangement.

At the moment we're restricted to cutting at 3mm depths.  This doesn't give us the best cut, but it does reduce the noise an amazing amount.  Cutting at 6mm makes an amazingly annoying high pitched whine and we've yet to identify exactly why.

When we first started looking at this project, one of the ideas that really appealed to us was the idea of making a Billy Cart (Soap-box racer for those in the US) that lived up to the expectations of our youth.  Growing up on a farm, I had built many, many carts out of various materials and various levels of danger.

My favorite was a three wheeled thing that we had clocked doing 60kph down the hill behind my parent's place.  Myself and my neighbour had a routine where you'd fly down the hill being followed by the paddock basher car.  When you finally ran out of roll, the car would drive past and you could grab a rope to be towed back to the top of the hill.

These will probably never do that sort of speed.  The wheels are way too small for one thing. Now I'm older (more responsible?) I suspect that doing a more reasonable speed is a good thing.

Argus helped me design these.  We're going for a classic racer type idea.  They were both hand built using jigsaws and rulers with the idea of producing something that could be repeatable using the cnc machine.

We succeeded and have since built a few with the machine, but they're quite large and represent a large investment in both time and materials.  The intention was to sell them but they're so big they'll always be a custom on-demand item.