Loen.Design

Rich Builds Stuff

I’m giving a talk at Makerspace North!

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Here’s the promo stuff from MakerspaceNorth…

We are very lucky to have Rich Loen on board to delve into the makings of your own CNC machine! 

Rich Loen has built many CNC machines including routers, mills, and cutters. He’ll share the knowledge he’s gained both building machines from scratch, and converting metal-working mills to CNC.

Tickets are limited so don’t miss out and snag yours now before they’re all gone!

 

More details from the event description:

Rich Loen (https://Loen.Design) has built many CNC machines including routers, mills, and cutters. He’ll share the knowledge he’s gained both building CNC machines from scratch, and converting metal-working mills to CNC.

Rich will cover:

  • Hardware options – machine frame, linear bearings, ball-screws, belt drives
  • Electronics – stepper motors, servos, drivers, power supplies, control interfaces like smooth steppers, G540, Planet CNC hardware.
  • Spindle options – routers, air/Water cooled spindles, high-speed spindles
  • Control Software – Mach3, Linux CNC, PlanetCNC, etc.
  • Design Software – Fusion 360, Vectric V-Carve Pro, Other options
  • Suppliers of hardware and software

Rich will be joined by Chris Manning (@silver_hand), a local watch maker and silver smith with years of CNC lathe and mill experience.

Rich will also bring a small CNC mill he made for carving names into hockey pucks – and if you’re lucky, you can get your name carved into a puck during the event!

Makers Central 2018 in Birmingham

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We were lucky enough to head over to England for the first Makers Central show in Birmingham in May 2018. @sliver_hand and I flew over on Thursday, to be ready in time for the Saturday and Sunday show. Amazingly, we packed an entire CNC machine in two suitcases, as checked luggage, and managed to man-handle it through the London Tube, as well as onto a train to Birmingham! It was exhausting!

The Makers Central show was excellent – an amazing accomplishment for a first-year event. Nick Zammeti did an amazing job organizing the event. We had HUGE 10×20 foot booth – about 4 times bigger then we needed – but we got set up quickly on Friday, and managed to create some test hockey pucks. Yup, we were two Canadian lads, in England, carving people’s names into hockey pucks! Special thanks to @Vectric, makers of the V-Carve Pro software we used to make the pucks – who managed to snag 200 hockey pucks for us at the show!

The event was great, with really good crowds – and just tons and tons of YouTube stars, like Laura Kampf and Jimmy Diresta, and about a hundred more! It was excellent hanging out in the hotel bar after the show, with all the folks from the show.

When the show finished, we headed down to London, touring the London Science Museum, a special tour of the Goldsmith’s Company, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, as well as dinners with some London friends.

@silver_hand and I talk about the trip in Episode 17 of the Off Hours Podcast.

 

A really great podcast: Off Hours

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A good friend of mine, Chris Manning, creates an excellent podcast called Off Hours.

Chris and his podcast partner Jon Edwards, release new episodes regularly, covering watch making, design, 3D printing, jewelry design and creation, along with interesting stories of their world travels. They can even make 10 minutes of talking about erasers interesting!

The show is slickly produced and edited, and is a delight to listen to. 

I particularly like the extensive show notes, which make it easy to follow up on all the things they talk about in each episode.

Highly recommended.