Fourth Axis

 After a long wait, I just received from China the 4th axis for my router. Now it is time to install it. 

I will make a set of holes with thread inserts on the sacrificial MDF board to make possible the use of the 4th axis or A-axis or B-axis, 

The electrical installation will be straight forward as I added to the original design of the control box the stepper motor driver and all the connections to the Pokeys control board. 

The next step will be to configure MAHC4 for the 4th axis, which I think will be only time consuming as they have a profile for the 4th axis. It is named  "A" bit I will probably change it to "4".

The major work will be to configure the post-processor for Fusion 369 and for Inventor CAM

The bad news is that the Fusion 360 tool path generation for the 4 and 5 axes has an extra cost. As I Have the paid version O have the option to activate the Manufacturing extension for one day at $25, or a month for $200. In my case, I will use the 7-day free trial to test and learn the creation of the 4 axes toll path. Depending on the project or work I will decide later what option I get.

As I pay for the full license of the Manufacturing and product design package, I need to check if Inventor CAM has the multiaxis option included. 

My version of the Hyperbola Clock

I just finished this beautiful version of the Hyperbola Clock as a present for my son for his MBA graduation.

For this one, I used a standard high torque quartz mechanism.

The clock was fully modeled in Fusion 360. The base is oak and the disk and x-shape panel with birch 1/8" plywood. The moving bar is a brass 1/8" diameter rod.

All the wood parts were processed in my router and I used the wood lathe to finis the oak part. 

For engraving the initials on the disk and the rod position reflection on the x-shape, I used a 5.5w led laser head attached to the spindle motor of my router.

The disc functions as the hour hand. 

The minute's hand, the support for the brass rod, and the hour markers on the oak base are 3D printed using black PETG filament.

I love projects where I can use all my tech gadgets!

New conical Clock Model

The clock is almost finished and now I am testing it for accuracy. The stepper motor is driven by an Arduino with a Real-Time clock.

A plastic mold to make Arepas

I am Venezuelan and love AREPAS!

Arepa is part of our culture. The arepa is also becoming very popular in many places in the world due to the massive immigration of Venezuelans leaving the country scaping of the terrible economic, social, and political disaster of the last 20+ years.

The arepa is made from pre-cooked cornmeal. The most popular brand of cornmeal used to make arepas is P.A.N.  You can find "Harina PAN" practically anywhere,

The video is self-explanatory:

Fix it, Don't trash it!

New toy, new activity!

Yes! I have now a brand new 3D printer and my first project after 9 hours assembling, testing and a bag of Haribo bears courtesy of Joseph Prusa,  was to fix my foldable hand truck.

I hate to trash things if they can be fixed and I kept may danged foldable hand truck waiting for the 3D printer. A plastic part that locks the folding mechanism broke months ago so it was unusable. With the help of Fusion 360, a caliper and my new 3D printer I made the new part and now I have a working hand truck 👍😀

The Suprematist Time Keeping Machine

The Suprematist Time Keeping Machine

I made this clock as a present for my younger son to decorate his new home. 

The idea of this clock started during a visit to the National Art Gallery in Washington, DC. In the modern art section, there is a sculpture created in 1915 by the French artist Ivan Puni (1894-1956). Puni was an artist following the Suprematist art movement, very popular in Rusia. Below the pictures that I took at the gallery:

Suprematist Construction Montage

By Ivan Puni (1915-1916)

When I saw the sculpture, the idea of a clock came right away. The black circle will long rectangle as the second's hand, the long rectangle in the red square the minute's hand and long polygon on the black triangle as the hour's hand. The artist used cardboard, paper, and some scrap metals to make the sculpture, some of the paint is fade out by the time. The sculpture is protected with a transparent plastic cover to protect it.

My clock is a replica in the size and shapes of the original sculpture, but I used some other materials for durability and modern construction techniques. I used for the back place 1/4" plywood and dark Danish Oil stain. There is another inverter L shape piece that I think is some kind of stone in the original art, I used MDF with a smoke gray paint. For the square, triangle, minute's, and the hour's hands and circle, I used 1/8" plywood. The second's hand is aluminum.

I built the large cone shape with a brass sheet, the smaller cone shape with a sheet of galvanized steel, and the corrugated panel with an aluminum sheet.

I used for all the wheels, except the motor pinion 1/4" and 3/8"  Premium Baltic Birch Plywood B/BB Grade. 

The clock drive is a stepper motor controlled by an Arduino Nano with an RTC (real-time clock) and a micro-stepping stepper motor drive board. The stepper motors are noisy when running at low speed, even with micro-stepping, so I isolated the motor with rubber spacers and also made a rubber pinion to drive the clock.

All the wheel shafts are 1/4" brass, and all are installed with sealed roller bearings.

Creating the Model:

First things, first! And the first thing is the model, and as usual, I used Fusion 360 to create the 3D model of the clock.

I found the dimensions information on the National Gallery website and started my model with a canvas image scaled at the real size. Below you can see an animation of the transition from the canvas picture to the model:

 

Many hours of work resulted in a model almost identical to the original. There is some small modification in the position of the hour's hand to avoid collision with the minute's hand and to reference a real-time relation between the hours, the minutes, and the seconds. The artist made the sculpture in a way that it almost shows a real hour!

Back to my garage (COVID-19) stay at home. New CNC controller for may 30/40 CNC router

Work, travel, and some health issues kept me out of my garage for a long time.

During these difficult days, doe to my age and previous health conditions, I must stay at home.

My design workload that can be done from home is also low as my customers are also reducing their activities to the minimum necessary, so I am back to my garage.

After a few days of cleaning and reorganizing, I restarted a project that was on hold for a long time: Refurbish my CNC; I have been working on this project on and off for several months during my short home return from my frequent travel schedule.

The scope of the project is:

1. New computer to control the machine
2. Upgrade to MACH4 software
3. New driver board compatible with MACH 4 and Ethernet connection
4. Add a manual pendant.
5. Mechanical maintenance of the router.
6. Add limit/home switches.
7. Add an Axis Z height probe.
8. Add a rotary axis (B)
9. Add a small laser head for engraving.

For the new computer, I used a laptop that my son left when he bought a gaming computer, this is an I5 8GB Ram, running Windows Vista. I replaced the hard drive with a 500GB SSD, installed Windows 10, and bought and installed a Mach4 hobby license.

After in-depth investigation and some failed purchases of driver boards compatible with Mach4, I finally found a good one with a lot of documentation and support, the PoKeys57CNC Motion Controller for Mach4, and now, after using it for some time, I am sure I made the right decision.

The next step was to order all the components and design with Fusion 360 and fabricate the controller box.

I fond all that I needed like connectors, switches, in Amazon. When I ordered the Pokey board, they offer a flat cable and connector kit that makes it very easy to interface.

The two crucial things I added are the pendant and the stepper motor drivers.

I sent the design of the sheet metal case to Protocase, and after the quotation and some engineering questions, I received the metal case in less than a week perfectly made and painted.

Once I got all the parts, I needed about 50 hours to assemble and wire the control and to install the limit, home switches, and the touch probe for tool measurement in the machine.

It took another full week to learn and start the Mach4 software, configure the Pokey in Mach4 and make the first part.

The last upgrade I made is that I bought a Chinese  5.5W led laser head, designed and built a bracket to install the laser on the body of the spindle motor, add the necessary connections to the new control and creat a laser machine profile for Mach4 I am delighted with the results although it is a very inexpensive laser device,

The Time Transparency Clock

Since the last post I have worked hard in the design and build of the Wood/Plastic clock. I have made a lot of changes in the original design, and I think that the final result is really a very nice clock!

It even has a name thanks to my sister! The time Transparency Clock:

Acrylic is difficult to work in the CNC with small diameter end mill bits. I used a 1/16” 2 Flute carbide end mill for the wheel teeth. After damaging several plastic stock and 2 end mill I learned:

• Use new and sharp bit or a sharp bit that has been used only in plastic. If you used a bit to cut wood, forget to use it later in plastic.
• You need to remove very little material each pass :.
• 24,000 RPM spindle speed and 10 inches/minute feed rate.
• Keep the bit cool with compressed air.

For the internal cuts I used a 1/8” 1 Flute end mill. You also need a new and sharp bit or a sharp bit that has been used only in plastic but feed and RPM are different: 15,125 RPM, 16.1 Inches/minute feed rate and .004” maximum step down per pass.

With the above settings, and with lots of patient it is possible to get a very nice and clean cut. Below a video showing the internal cut with 1/8” end mill:



The other complicated thing is to bond brass and acrylic. After several test I ended using 2 part transparent epoxy.

Here is a video showing several details of the clock.


I love the action of this clock!


Happy holidays to all!

New Plastic and Wood clock on the way

After some time way from my garage and design activities I am back with a new idea.

This time will be a modernistic table clock design with several interesting features:

• Combination of wood and plastic: The frame, the base and the dial will be made of wood. The wheels will be made of acrylic.
• All wheels will have an outer diameter of 6”
• This clock will have a seconds hand, but a very special one: retrograde seconds hand
• There will be a lot of “action” in the clock as it will have 5 wheels
• Will be driven by a stepper motor and an Arduino controller

Here is the computer design of the clock.

The clock does not have a name so in invite my readers to suggest one.

Making Mechanical Marvels in Wood with Fusion 360- Part 1

This is an old book! but a very good book for those who want to start building interesting things in wood.

To practice and learn how to use and simulate mechanism in Fusion 360 I modeled all the projects in the book except two.

What I found during this exercises is that Fusion is really friendly and essay to use for and also very powerful. It has some limitations with advance features like motion simulation and contact sets but for general design this things are not very important.

Here are all the models and pictures

Wooden Cam Follower:

 

The wooden Eccentric Mechanism