From Virtual To Real Blog

On August 7 2010 the website will be taken down permanently. It’s been up for 1 year already and the amount of sales never covered the cost for the domain name and the ssl certificate. It’s due for renewal and I don’t feel like throwing money into a thing I have no time to properly promote and create new patterns to sell. So as any good business sense will tell you, it’s time to cut cost. It’s been fun! thanks to all.

I know, it’s been a long time without news. Also the store has been under maintenance for a long time. What can I say, life sometime keeps me very busy. This after all is still a hobby for me. My mortgage does not depend on the revenues generated by my wood carvings, if it did, I’d be starving.

So, the CNC machine is still on hold. No time to work on it, and don’t really feel like it anyway. Spring is coming and my moods should improve. Winters up here still gives me the winter blues. But with light therapy, at least I don’t get the full SAD depressions anymore.

The CW still works, amazingly. I have noticed that even when you do everything right, the machine still finds a way to screw you up. The X-axis gets it’s position feedback with a brass roller circled with an O-ring. It is supposed to track the board movement in the X direction. Pressure is maintained by a spring, the roller and the encoder are mounted on a hinged plate under the fixed rail. If too much sawdust accumulated between the plate and the rail, insufficient pressure to maintain contact on the board makes the tracking roller to spin, giving the machine false tracking info. the result of this is screwed-up carvings.

Also, I believe that even with good pressure, the tracking roller can bounce and spin from the vibrations. Specially with the cutting bit or large contour bits. I’ll have to test that and take a video if I’m correct. It’s hard to explain.

Have a nice day!

I’m off work for the holidays and my PC died last night, great! Am using my wife’s laptop until I either replace the power supply or splurge and get a new PC (with all the pain associated with transfering all the softwares…). Will see how it goes.

Merry Xmas and all that.

A while ago after I replaced my broken QC with the modified Eliminator RC chuck, I created this PDF on how to disassemble and balance the QC. Here it is for all to read:

QC chuck balancing

I know, the construction of the CNC has been on hold for a while now. The ground wire of the E-stop managed to touch the mounting plate inside the controler box. That plate is on AC ground… guess that is not good. After some troubleshooting, I think the parallel port of the PC has some damage. So I have to get a parallel port card.

In the mean time, here some reading to pass the time. It’s a book about composting and how to use “humanure”, which is human waste. Very interesting reading. The book is PDF and free to distribute.

Humanure Handbook

I did the cleanup of the CW, took the top cover off, opened the encoder covers on the Y and Z motors, no dust. There’s actually a rubber seal on those cover. Put everything back in except the top cover. Both cover switches are now by-passed. Easyer to clean the machine and lubrify the posts and head height screws.

Received 2 replacement drivers from Probotix, free under warranty. Score 10 for excellent service. Put better heatsinks on the drivers. Will probably bring the whole CNC home for this weekend to resume the construction, as it seem that I won’t have time to work on it at work for the time being.

Will keep you posted.

A surge of new orders at work has forced me to put the CNC construction on hold for a while. I am seriously thinking about bringing it home to work on it. The CW is sitting idle, it need a deep cleaning, specially the encoders since I read that post about dust getting inside them. Another big flaw of the CW, having everything enclosed in a box allows the dust to find it’s way into every possible crevices.

Winter is approaching fast, spent time checking the snowblower, generator, pruning trees, cleaning up the backyard…  The mood of the season is taking hold, a period of transition, changes, getting rid of the summer’s growth and accumulation, changing color, adding on layers of clothes, making plans for the coming Xmas season.

Several projects for Xmas gifts made with the CNC, either the CW or the homebuilt one. One Dora the explorer for the little niece, sailboat for dad, Harley Davidson plaque for brother in law… got to get started on those, would not want Santa to deliver late

I just couldn’t wait after installing the limit switches before testing the router. I modified the mounting bracket I ordered from Probotix. It turns out their bracket if made of machined plastic!!! It’s kind of disappointing, and not mentioned on their website. It’s made of 2 parts, I used only the part that holds the router. The Z plate I machined to provide a reference groove on which the motor bracket is pushed against. Anyway, pics are worth blah blah… I did 2 concentric circles in a piece of plywood clamped to the frame, using the 1/16 carving bit, and 1 circle .040″ deep at 10IPM using a 1/4″ endmill.  Video of CNC executing a circle at 100ipm.

Progress is continuing on my CNC router. Here are pics of what I have done so far on the machine itself. The Y axis is complete, so is the Z axis. I’m currently working on the bracket that will tie the Z axis assembly to the X axis.

Now available in the store, Bamboo construction kit.

5 patterns which when combined makes a whole bamboo plant. Just pick a piece and copy it several time on your project. Play with the depth, orientation and size to compose a bush or a whole forest. Enjoy!