CNC

Adding a laser cutter to the BlackToe CNC Mill

August 6, 2011
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It’s time I took the CO2 laser from the Chinese cutter and attached it to the gantry of my BlackToe CNC mill. Effectively increasing the size of the cutting bay from the tiny 5×8″ to a whopping 2’x 4′ – the small size of the cutting area was starting to become annoying – and it seemed ridiculous […]

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At the Maker Faire in Detroit

July 31, 2011
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Spending the weekend up at the Maker Faire in Detroit. Check out the Maker Faire Daily stream for more info. UPDATE : Just got back from the Faire – always a pleasure to go to these, and nice that they’re more local than San Francisco now… Wow lot’s of stuff to see and do. The […]

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The Clock Of The Long Weekend…

July 25, 2011

I’ve spent a lot of time on the “The Long Now” website lately – I would urge you to check it out if you’ve not seen it – one of the things that caught my attention was the 10,000 year clock they are trying to build in Texas. Inspired by the design, I thought I […]

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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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