- Still working on the Chain Drive Clock. There’s a lot of electronics, software, mechanicals and other processes in this project.
- Video out about the Supply boxes around the studio
- Working on a video about our new Aciera F5 mill. We are very happy with this machine!
- Working on cutting a lot of numbers out of Lexan. It’s not laser friendly, and the CNC is not excited about cutting it either…
- Designing a faster way to make the Wine Display project – a whole lotta CNCing. Build time should be reduced to an hour or two. Down from a few days.
- Working on the design for a cool, small table.
- Working on the display frame for the Chain Drive Clock.
- A whole lot of rocket launches this week. We put them up on the huge screen in the gallery. SpaceX’s SN8 was awesome.
- Set up the Electronics workbench with a nice tool chest, etc. It’s nice to have a dedicated workspace for this stuff.
- Going through the storage area and labeling things. Sorting things. Organizing things.
- Started a project to beef up the main CNC router. Ordered parts to stiffen the gantry, and improve the spindle. 9 horsepower, 3 phase spindle!!!
- Installed components to stiffen the CNC Router Gantry. Much better.
- Reg is back! Building a bunch of Wine Racks for David at dfwine.ca. The CNC Router has been very busy cutting all the parts for the wine racks. We are using a new design that is more CNC friendly – but a bit less sexy than the last iteration.
- Repaired a chair! It’s nice to be able to weld stuff whenever you want.
What’s Happening Now – April
- Chain Drive Clock is done!!
- Working on a quick project – an Arch Light. Looking for a great big light bulb.
- Building some shelving for a bedroom.
- Helped my Neighbour Laris with a quick maple/walnut live-edge table top.
- Got the new laser running with lightburn software. Also setting up a camera to work with lightburn.
What’s Happening Now – March
- The chain drive clock is done! Now working on videos for it.
- Getting back to other projects, and a pretty major shop cleanup!
- Filming some footage about our Langmuir Crossfire Pro Plasma Cutter
- Adding some safety features to the chain drive clock
- Built a wall rack for various saws and tools. And then Giaco made a cool video about the same thing! His is nicer.
- We keep getting nice comments about our sign messages. Thanks!
- Darcy (@inventorartist) gave us a cool, 60W REDSAIL X700 Laser. Thanks Darcy! Great addition to our shop. We’ll show you more about that in some upcoming videos.
- Got in a new controller board for the laser. Should help modernize it.
- Finished Clock. Clock broke immediately. Clock maker annoyed.
- Made a “Recording” sign. Spelled most of RECORDING correctly.
- Installed new controller board, water cooler etc in X700 Laser. Got it up and running with Lightburn software, which is excellent.
- Redid the motor mounts for the chain drive clock. A shaft on one of the teknic servo motors snapped due to misalignment. Have now installed proper couplers on all motors.
- Reg built a seat that looks like a tractor. And then he added a power drive with a cordless drill. Cool Reg!
What’s Happening Now: February 2021
- Updated the sign! Everything Happens So Much.
- Working on the clock. It’s actually moving and telling time, and sometimes it really screws up. Quite maxing out the Arduino CPU running it. Working on cleaning up things so it looks nicer.
- The LEDs in the Nazca cat are burning out for some reason. Maybe I got the voltage wrong. Or, maybe they were cheap eBay LEDs!
- Working on a new video about the CNC Router upgrades we just completed.
- Upgrading the DRO’s on our Aciera F5 mill.
- Thinking about welding something.
- DRO has been upgraded on the Aciera F5 to a 3 axis unit from DROPROS.com. Very happy with the upgrade.
- Switching the clock over to Teensy 4.1 device – has a much more powerful CPU and a lot of nice capabilities. This is done now, and things are much improved.
- Written 10 rendering routines for time, selectable by a pot, so you can set the clock to be quiet, or more rambunctious.
- Released video for CNC Router upgrade
- Continuing to improve the CNC Router – stiffening the rack and pinion gear system. Done!
- Working on a small end-table for a couch
- Updated the sign! I am not a cat – maybe.
- Cleaning out the rubbish in the storage area. Old stuff from my childhood, micro-boards I’ll never use, old books and CD’s.
- Updated the sign again! First I was afraid, I was petrified.
What’s Happening Now: January 2021
- For the Chain Drive Clock – the numbers we had cut on our laser were too brittle. We needed to switch to Polycarbonate (Lexan), but we can’t cut this on our laser as it gives off chlorine gas, which will kill us. We had numbers cut at Carleton University on their waterjet cutter – and this worked great, with fast turn-around, and excellent accuracy. I’ve also ordered components to do a 1:3 reduction on the gearing for the stepper motors so that they’ll be able to handle longer chain lengths and heavier numbers. I ordered teeny tiny drive chains for this and they are impossibly cute. I wanted to stick with chain, obviously.
- The CNC router rebuild is coming along nicely. I ordered a bunch of parts from AvidCNC for the Z axis and a new spindle – 8.7HP!! I built an adapter plate out of 3/4″ aluminum, machining it on the F5 mill. Just lovely to use that machine. The CNC Router is back up and running, and I’ll be working on the dust collection next.
- The wine racks for dfwine.ca are about done – just getting their last coat or two of finish. I tried to cut corners and put on a heavier coat of finish – which just ended up dripping and running and looking horrible. So, now I get to sand it back to flat, and then do more finish coats. Gotta learn to avoid shortcuts, and just do things right.
- The Nazca cat in the window of our studio is getting dimmer, which is annoying. The fake neon LED strips seem to fade out after a month of continuous illumination. It’s a pain to have to replace all these LED strips. And where the heck can I find better quality lighting for this?
- Another big-ish project this month was drilling out all the holes on our welding table to 5/8″. We had originally cut them on the CNC Plasma a bit small, with the intention of drilling them out. Well, Reg got into it, and spent a couple of days drilling holes. Thankful we had the mag drill for this.
- I came into the shop on the weekend just to play around with the CNC. I used the Stipplegen2 program to process some images and then cut them on the CNC Router. I did things like Einstein, The mona Lisa, a big banana, a fingerprint and my logo. It’s interesting to see how stipplegen2 works and how to best process images for it, and how to CAM the output so it looks decent.
- i found out that the rack and pinion drive system was causing me some issues on the CNC. I can actually see the rack gear flexing enough to make the whole CNC Gantry move by up to 1/8″ when it reverses direction. I’ve ordered some more rack clips to see if I can stiffen the system. And then I’ll finish the fine tuning by relaxing the motor acceleration parameters a bit.
- Back to the Chain Drive Clock – assembling with the waterjet cut digits and a much longer chain. I’ll have to revamp the code to deal with the longer, heavier chain. I have also ordered the parts for a 3:1 reduction in case needed. My feeling now is that it won’t be needed.
- I played around with box making software like https://en.makercase.com/ and the built-in Vectric box gadget just to try to get a recipe together for fast boxes. Every solution has issues, but I made a bunch of useful boxes and parts trays for projects on the go! I also wasted quite a bit of plywood. It’s odd that the Vectric box gadget doesn’t save some of the important settings – but the code for the widget is available and pretty easy to modify, so I’ll just do that. I found another box gadget on the Vectric forums – but the code was a nightmare. Impossible to fix it’s issues.
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