So we got the new larger carcass back in June. Since then we have kept fairly busy. Testing has lead to 24 minor fixes and tweaks to the design and counting. For those of you who expressed interest in being Beta testers but were not contacted by us yet – we will be doing another round of testing in a few weeks. At that time we will be emailing everyone who contacted us about being beta testers as well as posting the call on our blog and elsewhere. The next round of testing should be very close to what we will start selling. At this point the mechanical and case design are locked in – but we are updating the electronics to aid in ventalation and assembly.
Archive for July, 2009
Status update for the new mills
Thursday, July 9th, 2009A visit from the vice presidend of getting stuff done…
Thursday, July 9th, 2009So the other day I hit a big low – I had 4 CNC mills in the house and not one was working! They were all in pieces either being built, or upgraded. So when my friend Joel – (A.K.A the vice president of getting sh*t done) – and I got together for hanging out and beers it actually turned into getting my big mill’s CNC conversion finally up and running. Since my friends first helped me pick up the mill a little over a year ago it was way over due.
Joel setting up the temporary brackets
To get things going we built a set of wooden mounting brackets and clamped them to the mill. Now that it is running the first thing I need to cut out are a set of real brackets – but it will be easier then making the brackets from metal by hand. I had knocked up a set of wood brackets a while ago and Joel was polite enough not to mention that they looked like they were made by a crazed beaver. Joel did some strategic sawing – and filing – and cutting – and well making some new parts while I soldered. I felt horrible. Did I mention that he could not even have any beer since he was racing this weekend and was in training?. Yeah, I know how to show my friends a good time – luckily they are all died in the wool geeks.
Temporary Y bracket
Here you can see the motor brackets clamped in place and supporting the motors. The motors are strong enough to flex the wood frames so until I cut metal mount plates the mill needs to be run slowly – but this setup has worked remarkably well so far. Now all I have to do is clean up the wiring and start cutting new brackets. Then we can *finally* start using the mill for automated production of parts in house. Kind of geeky but I like the idea of using a large CNC mill to make little ones.
Anyone looking for a mill larger and stronger then Purple Crayons products ( Hey, it weighs in at over 900 Lbs as compared to our 10!) I would definitely recommend the g3102 if you have the money and the space. The only other online information I know of is over at www.cnczone.com. The setup described there is nice but after Joel was making fun of my loosing the handles last winter I opted for this design with the motors folded under the ways. When considering a g3102 I would also recommend checking out the postings at www.benchtest.com. That site has excellent posts covering both cleaning and setting up the mill as well as adding third party features to it.