Purple Crayon

So upgrading the thickness of the rods we were using made an amazing difference in the rigidity of the axis. The ¼ inch rods we were using tested fine with the smaller carcass – but introduced an exponential error with increasing length.

The other thing we are experimenting with is adding pillow blocks to reinforce the glue joints. It really secures the strengths of the joints and mating points of the different parts of the mill.

Mill update

The combination of the blocks and the thicker rods should really let us start working through testing all the other parts of the mill. Kind of excited.

Wow, time sure can fly. In the last month we mostly chipped away at all the very non sexy parts of starting a new company – most of which I wont be posting about here. We are excited that it looks like we may be bringing on a real mechanical engineer – which should make all our products better.

In terms of our mills the work of the last month went into the new electronics. Again nothing very sexy to talk about – we just decided to split the design over two boards and change a bunch of connectors and a few parts.

The reason for all the changes is because we found having everything all on one board – while cheaper to build – leads to a huge bundle of wires all terminating in a tight space. This in turn leads to unpredictable stresses on the wires as things are initially installed. We were worried about failure in the field due to this stress on the wires so we split the design into a motor driving board and a controller board. So far we are fairly happy with the new design – it is easier to assemble and debug. Looking forward to what the next round of testers have to say.

We also decided to use slightly more expensive screw post connectors to help ensure the electronics could be easily installed or swapped out for future upgrades. Even simple soldering patches are the definition of not fun once the units are together. The new connectors should also enable us to send out upgrade or repair modules if needed.

So the good news is things are really starting to speed up again – so we should be running another round of testing soon. We will be contacting people who asked to be beta testers when we are ready – and posting content describing how the test were going here.

The old carcass sitting atop the new

Now that the new design is verified we will post more pictures and information soon.

We just heard back from the vendor doing our laser cutting. We are getting a single set of parts cut for the latest design – once we have them assembled we plan on getting a run made for our Beta testers. Best guess estimate is that Beta units will be going out in about a week and a half.

We decided to re-work how the tool height zeroing and limit switch mechanisms work. Which was the last major change we wanted to do – so it looks like the version being Beta tested will be very close to what we will end up selling. We will be posting pictures here next week as we assemble the new design.

Ok, so Joel pointed out that in my earlier post about setting up the Grizzley G3102 mill I kind of didn’t mention his fixing my mill. Honestly it completly slipped my mind!

Joel - I am not leaving until I see that mill cut something!

Some of the G3102s shipped with a slightly under machined downfeed collet. People with this problem have suggested all sorts of crazy ways to fix the problem. My personal favorite – which is even advocated by Grizzley when you call their tech support – is to wrap a stick with sand paper and jam it into the running spindle to wear down the high spot. No joke. Joel looked at the problem and said – Why don’t we use a break hone?

Cheap break hone used to fix the down feed collet

It took two of them to bring down the inside diameter enough. We used cheap ones that were only $3 each. If any of you are trying this fix at home it avoids wearing down the collet alignment nub. So I am very happy with this hack.

For custom confection design one of the things our products will be able to make are custom molds. This is most likely how people would make custom shaped chocolate pieces – not carving them. However, we realized that cheap chocolate bars with a high wax content are available everywhere. So we looked into using cheap chocolate as a substitute for machinable wax. While expensive, since machinable wax is reusable and easy to get a hold of. We are even going to ship a small quantity of machinable wax with our mills. In a pinch though, from our initial testing it defiantly looks like chocolate will work as a substitute.

The picture shows the letters S&T stippled into the surface of the chocolate and a swirl pattern carved most of the way into the bar.  

At 10:30pm on December 26^th 2008, Konrad and Aaron brought the company’s “Bluebox” prototype online  successfully demonstrating 3-axis positioning. We were both fairly excited. Bluebox is the third generation of a design that we have been working on and tweaking for months. Testing showed mechanical things are finally starting to get dialed in, and everything was working better then we hoped. 

We forgot to take a picture with both of us in the frame. Hence the duplicate pictures.