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What’s Happening Now – April 2022

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  • Working on Voronoi Cubbies. I really like the Voronoi pattern, as used in nature by the patterns on a giraffe and the wings of a dragon fly. It’s an interesting mathematical solution for filling a space. I designed a square shelf unit, and then filled out the shelves using a Voronoi pattern. I cut the top and bottom plates on the CNC router, and then cut the dividers by hand, carefully fitting them into the slots provided by the CNC router. It’s been an interesting project. I’m considering making a bunch of them. The cubbies will be painted.
    Fitting dividers for the cubbies
    Fitting dividers for the cubbies

    With the top plate fitted.

 

  • While cutting the Voronoi panel, I had an error in my cutting tool path, which ended up with a loose piece of wood being in the path of the 1/2″ router bit. As the cutter passed by, the piece of wood was thrown from the CNC router, and exited the building via a window in the garage door. It was slightly exciting.
    Hole where the CNC Router flung a piece of wood

     

  • I am continuing to work on the bell project. I have shifted focus to the design of the IO electronics board for a while. I’m planning to use a Raspberry Pi 4 as the control computer, and the IO board will connect using the 2×20 pin bus. The IO board will have relays, inputs, power supply, servo connections, etc. It has to be adaptable to power all the different kinds of mechanisms that will be required to ring bells, from thimble size, to church size! It will ring bells via solenoids, stepper motors, and dc gear motors. The inputs will be used for limit switches and user buttons.
  • We’ve been installing a gallery picture hanging system with rails, and cables that hang down. 
  • We are upgrading our dust collection. Our current dust collector is a Laguna system, and it’s not meeting our expectations at all. It was pretty horrible to assemble, and just doesn’t work well. We are planning to relegate it to about 1/2 of the shop and are trying out a Harvey Woodworking G-700 for use with the table saw and jointer. Why don’t dust collector manufacturers provide more than one remote? Or even the option to buy multiple remotes??
  • Looking into making more Voronoi cubbies. 
  • The main shop air compressor is failing. It could be the motor or the relay that controls the motor. We are looking into it!

 

I’m giving a talk at Maker Space North on February 26, 2019

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Https cdn evbuc com images 55192831 133647236463 1 original

 

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!

A Walnut Slab table – with 20 legs!

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My company has a cool tradition where every employee gets a pair of red Converse All-Stars when they start. We also give a pair to every customer!

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And, we needed a coffee table for a small meeting room at our office.

This was the result!

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I made two videos about the construction of this table. The first shows the whole process of building the table. The second shows how I used Vectric Aspire to make 20 soles to hold the shoes on the legs of the table.

The walnut slab started out like this – roughly finished at the KJP Select Hardwoods shop. I had to sand it to a nice smooth 320 grit finish, and remove all the debris and loose bits from the unfinished edges of the slab.

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I used Vectric Aspire to drill the holes for the legs. The dowels were all slightly different in size, so I had to make 5 different hole sizes to accommodate the differences.

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I finished the top with Rubio Monocoat, which is a two-part oil finish. It’s very easy to use – you mix the two parts, then apply the finish, and wipe it off after 5 minutes. There is no point in doing more coats, or letting the finish sit longer. The finish drys in 24 hours, and is completely sealed after a week. The finish is designed for use on floors as well, so it holds up well on a table.

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Here are some more views of the process and the finished table.

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