CNC

Wood-cut Iris mechanism

July 11, 2011

I’ve been spending some time on the Thingiverse site just lately. The site is for owners of 3D printers, and allows the exchange of print files. The ‘iris box‘ mechanism looked interesting, and easy to adapt for CNC milling. So I downloaded the object files and extracted the face details as a toolpath. I cut [...]

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…etching a Lament Configuration

July 6, 2011
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The “Lament Configuration” is the name given to the wooden puzzle box that features in the movie Hellraiser. In the original book (The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker) the box is black lacquer and needs to be completely disassembled for the gateway to Hell to open. For the movie a more intricate looking box was [...]

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DIY CNC: Carving a clock face

June 20, 2011

I’d been putting it off for ages, but I thought it was about time I upgraded my CNC skills to use multiple tool changes. Since I added a home sensor to my DIY “BlackToe” gantry there was no excuse not to figure it out. This relief cut uses 1/4″, 1/8″ and 1/16″ bits to perform [...]

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The Arduino controlled Electromagnetic Pendulum Clock

June 5, 2011

OK, only about 100 years too late – but I finally managed to assemble the clock works for the electromagnet-driven pendulum clock. The primary drive is a 15-tooth ratchet. This is connected to two 60 tooth gears that creates the second hand drive. A 60:1 reduction gearing comprising 10:108 +18:100 (the largest gears) creates the [...]

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Electromagnetic Pendulum – making it tell the time

May 31, 2011

A while ago I posted a video showing a pendulum driven by a pulse motor: It worked by using a single coil to detect the field from a magnet embedded in the pendulum base. An op-amp (wired as a comparator) detects when the pendulum reached the equilibrium point (vertical) a voltage (5-12v) is applied to [...]

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Aligning 40 Watt laser mirrors, without burning your eyeballs out…

May 5, 2011
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Since the laser cutter has a fixed tube, and “flying” mirrors – it’s critical to get the alignment right over the full range of gantry movement. It occurred to me that if I could actually *see* the path of the laser, it would make mirror alignment a whole lot easier. Video also features my $25 [...]

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Upgrading a Laser Cutter from China (Part Two)…

April 25, 2011
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More information on the (ongoing) saga of my recent purchase… Using a multimeter it was easy to work out the wires coming from each motor. They are bipolar and so two pairs of the four wires will register a resistance, these are the A and B coils. They require 24V and 0.5 Amps. They stay [...]

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Upgrading a Laser Cutter from China…

April 15, 2011
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I recently wrote about some of the problems I’d had with the Chinese Laser Cutter I bought over eBay. It became apparent that I was going to have to replace the X/Y controller board, as this was not functioning correctly. The Challenge – adding a new controller I just pulled my old CNC out of [...]

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Buying a Laser Cutter from China (Part Three)

April 13, 2011
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And things were going so well… When I first connected the software to the cutter I could get no response at all. I examined the supplied parallel cable and found that some of the pins had been pushed in. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed with some needle-nose pliers. So I fixed the cable and plugged [...]

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Buying a Laser Cutter from China (Part Two)…

April 12, 2011

Yesterday I wrote about the Laser Cutter / Engraver I received (40W Craftworks CO2 Laser Engraver&Cutter by strong_signstech). In this post I’m going to hook up the laser and do some initial system tests. Having read the posts on Andy Slater’s blog it seemed a good idea to remove the lens and mirrors and give [...]

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