Sad, not all that pathetic

I had a strong urge to get something accomplished on Sunday, the wife took the boy to do church things so I had the house all to myself. I was so excited about it that I was up late on Saturday trying to map out a strategy for what to work on. For those keeping score at home I have a never ending project list, but the current list goes a little something like this.

• Finish the Mantis Micro CNC machine
• Finish cutting the bottom of the keg off to make a false bottom for my mash tun
• Finish Ripping Seasons of Shows for wife
• Design, and machine or order a commemorative plaque (see finish CNC above)
• Lacquer a painting I did on a piece of oak mount said plaque and hang somewhere in the house

Well I finished none of that.  In the process of pulling out the box that has the CNC machine in it, I came to the grim realization that I needed to clean the basement before I could even consider working on anything.  There where no surfaces to even begin working on.  In cleaning up the living room most of the mess had found it's way down to the basement, so it was time to face facts and start sorting for discard and recycle.  I have more than a passing fancy for electronics, but for some reason just keep never getting started working on it. This doesn't stop me from reading electronic's magazines, and accumulating said magazines. I have 3 years worth of Servo Magazine and have subscribed to Makezine since it launched.  I recycled the servo magazines without a second thought because I over my fleeting interest in robotics, but I wasn't quite ready to just bin the Make magazines.  I spent a little while trying to figure out if my local library would be interested in receiving them as a donation, and was somewhat thwarted in that they only accepted substantial donations (10 years or more ect) based on their website.  I reached out to a local hackerspace to see if they wanted them, and they agreed to put them in their library so I'm feeling pretty good about that.

Basically all I accomplished was to toss out some magazines, do some laundry and wipe down a large section counter top.

Up all night

So what do you do when decongestants keep you up at night?  If you're me you get out your long neglected CNC project and start epoxying shit together.  So in essence right now I'm watching epoxy dry and trying to sit still so I don't accidentally bump something while it's drying.  Sure sleep would be awesome, but who needs it when you can smell epoxy drying (note to future self, do this shit outside!  Assuming you have enough braincells left to understand this when it's all said and done.)  The package said it would be 5 minutes, and it's tacky dry, but I want another coat so I'm posting on the internets, hurr durr.  Seriously kids sudafed is a dangerous drug it leads to science!

Micro CNC Micro update

I had a fairly productive little weekend on my CNC project, and I wanted to give an update before I forgot.  My Dad and I didn't get time to work on it together the other weekend (my younger brother is buying a house so most of the attention for the weekend was on him.)

But here is a picture of my progress.

So the things you cannot tell by the picture, Those rods are cut down from 3 foot long rods with a hack saw, and filed flat.  Prior to this weekend I had all the parts cut, but none of them where assembled so I drilled the holes for the rods as well as glued, clamped and screwed all the side pieces together.  The cutting stage and the sacrificial base are co-drilled and and screwed together.

I spent a good deal of time on the rods and the bushings making sure there where not catch points on the rods, so I had a small file and spent about an hour sliding the bushings and filing all the rough patches down.  The Z axis is drilled out, but I had a bad drill spot that I am shimming and wood gluing to fill back in.  After drilling the holes I put the rods in and realized one hole was closer to 80° than 90° so I had to clamp the holy hell out of it to get the holes to match up and correct for the poor drilling.  I have the hole shimmed with paper as filler and the wood glue is drying, but I may do a second application of glue before I epoxy it for a little more strength.  If there is a problem with torsion I will drill holes for metal bracing pins with a drill press I have access to at work.  The Z access sort of floats and is the weakest link in the setup so I may choose to  make a bracing pin.

microrax cnc

If you didn't click through to watch that video the end of the last post this is the guy that is just boiling my blood.

Hey, I just whipped this fully functional thing cause it was interesting




He made his frame out of this stuff, which I'm thinking I need to get some of given the ease of making it square and LEGO'S FIT IN THE TRACKS OMG WTFBBQ.

CNC Update of sorts

So all of the parts I mentioned in this post have arrived and this weekend my Father (woodworker extraordinaire) is going to be in town so I think rather than jump into my latest time sink/money waster ie CigarBox guitar, or Charcuterie.  For the curious or deranged, you can see a tiny window into my clusterfuck of a brain over at my Beer Links Page.

I need to make sure I can locate all the pieces, but it may finally be time to fire up this tiny CNC Router and get it working.  This post from a dude that had no electronics background that just whipped up a CNC router may have been some of the genesis for getting off my ass and completing this project.

CNC Mantis Build

Some time ago I stumbled onto the Mantis CNC machine and have been plotting to build it for sometime now. I have long been interested in CNC milling, but I didn't want to make a $1000 investment to get into the hobby, and find out I was really not that interested in making stuff. I've done a fair number of metal projects over the years and have always needed to come up with a way to get more precise results then I was getting with hand tools. The task of wading through all the different build styles and figuring out a BOM to source was daunting, and everytime I started I butted up against the same problem, where do you source the controller, and where do you source the motors. For a large scale CNC Router, I still plan on purchasing one of the plans from Solsyva, and getting the motor's, power supply and controller from Xylotechs but that is for when I'm ready to plunk down about $1000 for a large and accurate machine.

The Mantis build was different because it focused on something that could be made with simple machine tools, and the cheap materials.  I printed out the parts, and cut and drilled all of the "pegging" holes to do the co-drills for parts that line up about a year ago, but just have waffled about pulling the trigger on buying motors and controllers.  A recent project at work might have given me the catalyst I was in need of.  While breaking down an old digital sign so that we can recycle and dispose of the parts I found this little gem inside.

That is a variable (currently set to 5v) industrial power supply.  Having a cheap (free) power supply in hand I went looking for 5v steppers and a controller for my project.

I bought some motors that I'm a little sad about in hindsight, but they where cheap and will work.  I'm sad because they are a five lead stepper that means they can only operate as uni-polar motors (bi-polar have more torque) you can see the difference here.  Because the motors I bought aren't the NEMA body style I'm glad that I held out on drilling the motor mount holes.  And without further adieu here is a picture of my controller.

  I don't have either the motors or the controller at this point the auctions on ebay have ended, but everything is in Hong Kong, so there's the inevitable 3 - 4 week slow boat from China wait.  I expect to see them sometime in early November and will update as I work to get this build finished.  The BOM that was provided on the Mantis site is already out of date and I had to come up with replacements from my local hardware vendor Tacoma Screw.  Because the local vendor sold in units of one rather than boxes of screws I saved about $40 on materials to say nothing of the amount of shipping I saved.  The motors and Controller combined are about $40 shipped so even is some part don't pan out as planed I only out grand total for this project less than $150 and time wasted.  I'll try to post more when I get all the bits gathered up.

CNC build

So beer nerd aside I also have wanted to make a CNC router for quite some time now.  When I saw the Mantis cnc router and like the overall simplicity of the build and thought that the small size might corrolate to a lower overall cost.  I wanted to get into this for not much more than $100 just to see if I could make something fun and not drop a lot of cash.

I'm at about $50 worth of hardware between the wood and all the guides and lead screws that have to be cut by hand, bolts screws and anti-lashing nuts.  I have not bought a single electronic component (the expensive part of the build) and I've already blown half of my self imposed budget on parts.  The trouble is, I lack the expertise to design and build a driver board and the ones that I have seen on various sites all run about $50 bucks.  I would still need a power supply and stepper motors.  I believe that the build could be low power enough to just use a spare PC power supply, but then I need to source stepper motors that run on 12vdc.  I have seen a few relatively simple driver boards that I could build, but again I'm in the position of not having the knowledge to troubleshoot the electronics if my build goes wrong.

Anybody have any experience with this stuff or think it is interesting?  It took me just shy of forever to get a true 1:1 print of the part for templating  on the wood, and then I realized that as long as they all where printed on the same printer that they should have come out on the same scale and fit because of everything being the same scale.  So far all I have accomplished is buying parts and getting the wood parts cut.  I did the drilling that would allow me to assemble the outside stage, but didn't drill any of the motor mounts or slides.  I didn't want to put holes in the wood before I got the parts that I would be using.  Since then I have bought the hardware, but the electronics roadblock has left we wondering if it is best to just walk away from the project $50 dollars poorer, or press on and buy about another $150 worth of motors and electronics.

I need to work on being more social and getting to a hackerspace and see if there is someone with some freaking clue to help me out.