FridayFollow

Maine has a ton of little festivals during tourist season. My fav is the Greek Festival - this weekend:) We're going today. The rest of the weekend will be dealing with a pile of dirt that got dropped in my driveway, weeding my garden, reading, strawberries, some gaming...same old stuff.

Promise to not laugh?

I've been having gaming issues. I'm still playing Warhammer, and still love the game, but it's two years old now with no expansion. I'm topped out and things get kinda boring sometimes. So, I've been looking around for something else to bide my time with. I just really didn't feel like playing the same old fantasy type mmos. I had read some reviews of games. One of them was a revisit of a game that got off to a bad start - the reviewer now LOVED the game. So, I DLed PotBS for a second time. Played for about 45mins. The experience was worst than the first time...way worse. I couldn't uninstall it fast enough. What could have possibly possessed me?

Here's a fun lil browser mmo -> Transformice. It's kind of addicting.

Edit - changed link to an english version of transformice.

Edited, Jun 25th 2010 3:37pm by Elinda

Fuck off.

Today: Drove through gorgeous Herefordshire with the birds singing, sun shining, and the fUcling nails piercing my front tyre . An hour for the tow truck and two hours waiting for the right tyres. Still. Tonight is sitting in the beer garden at the pub with friends watching the footy on the iPad.

Saturday/b]: a drive out with the girly, maybe a row along the Thames at Oxford and a saunter round Blenheim Palace.

[b]Sunday: Friends round to watch the Grand Prix and footy and a kick-**** Barbeque.

Off to the beach! Hopefully the weather holds, although I wouldn't mind a little rain at night, as I'd like to test drive The hammock I just got. It's been great for camping so far, but it's never rained on any trips.

I have Friday off! Went biking today, and dropped more in the money pit that is cycling.

Hope you didn't pay too much for it. I have no doubts as to its performance or anything, but its built out of some pretty standard parts that anyone can buy.

In all seriousness, though, that's a fairly neat setup. I assume those holes on each axis are for actuators? Is this thing going to be manual or programmable?

Edited, Jun 25th 2010 7:29pm by AshOnMyTomatoes

I got a really, relly good deal on it. If I had access to the machine tools, I possibly could have built one cheaper, but not much. Especially not with the powder coated frame, etc. Origionally I was going to do that, building one similar to the 5bears cnc bench mill ( http://www.5bears.com/cnc.htm ), but in the end, I figured a couple hundred dollars over parts cost for a very well put together frame that I know for a fact is in allignment was going to be a better idea than my trying to build one and possibly having to redo things because of mistakes. Ball screws and linear rails are fairly expensive, even for the "cheap" ones. I am missing one crossmember at the moment. Apperently they forgot to attach it. but so far thats the only thing i've ran across that was an issue, and they are sending me that along with the router mount.

I am planning on making a few improvements on the basic design. Swarf Shrouds for the rails so they don't get gummed up, home and limit switch mounts, a 4th axis on the base frame once the table top is aquired, etc. Maybe a tool changer someday.

The holes are the axis actuators. the machine takes NEMA 23 stepper motors or servo motors using the same mount pattern. It is a belt drive unit as opposed to direct drive, but given that the motors should just be positioning the unit, and not trying to torque it into place by force, that shouldn't be an issue. I'll probably make up some belt guards just in case though too.

I'll have the whole thing hooked up to a gecko G540 4 axis controller, most likely the black unit at the bottom of this page: http://www.kelinginc.net/ControlSystem.html . Given the amount of electrical work and the cost, i'm definitly going to hire that bit out. I'm ok with a soldering iron, but i'd rather get that part right and get a properly wired setup than botch it and fry something. The controller will be attached to an older laptop which I already have. Haven't decided on the router i'll end up using. Probably a repurposed porter cable or bosch unit for now, maybe something a bit more robust later.

My design background is a mix of hobby, some 2d professional experiance (drafting survey plans and house plan changes, etc.), and a bunch of 3D work when I was in college still on the aerospace engineering path. I'm mainly familiar with Autocad, though I do have access to Microstation as well through the home use program offered by the Other Job. So essentially enough to get by, though i'm sure I have some glaring ommisions in proper design. I got to use a milling machine for about a year in high school, been wanting to get my own ever since.

I'll definitly keep you in mind though. May be able to work out some design / machine time trades or something if you had someting you wanted made that was within the capabilities of the machine.

My initial plans for it once it is fully operational, aside from the requisite death rays, are to focus on low volume, high return thingies. One of my areas of expertise is in flying radio controll things. Mainly helicopters. There is a huge market for aftermarket carbon fiber parts for helicopters and whatnot. My little brother also plays the viola, and apperently there are next to no electronic violas out there. something like that would be easy to make. Or high end billet computer parts (fan grilles, etc). Maybe even high detail part sets for plastic models (high detail resin aftermarket engine or cockpit sets for WW-II aircraft for example)

I'm sure future generations will look back at this post and wonder, but attaching a robot capable of making other robots and weapons to a microsoft operating system computer seemed like a good idea at the time. Honest!

Edit: link fix

Edited, Jun 25th 2010 6:33pm by Kaolian

I think I have some CNC software somewhere from when I took CNC machining in college. I'll hunt it up when I get the chance, maybe it's something you can use. I think what I have is an old-ish version of SurfCam.

Nice bolding.