Jayson, I love the redgum! it's such a dense wood and the finish you achieved is really clean considering the transitions you made across the grain. (Maybe some gold inlay would make it POP!

Your getting into the signs, are there any tips for the group?

Just a little update...

Machined some thin aluminium. It was not the best to machine but the mechmate did ok.

Attachment 6270 Attachment 6271 Attachment 6272

Just some parts for another project. I'm glad I made the machine large enough to make these parts ;)

Jayson.

Jayson,

That looks like a gatling gun or a ray gun.

Nils,
You beat me to it. I was thinking gatlin gun or HHO generator.

Nice looking discs! Did you have any problems holding down the small pieces as they were cut free? 1/16" endmill? Nice work. :)

Interesting

It will be a little minigun when its completed.

Heath, I drilled the holes first then placed a screw in the centre hole to hold it down. I ran around the outside with a 3mm spiral carbide cutter.

Jayson.

Jayson,

What is it going to shoot, BBs?

Hi Nils,

No, it is just for show. Making things like this work in Australia ends with the Police taking away your guns and license and never being allowed to own a gun again. Even though I would like the challenge of seeing if I could make it work, it's not worth the risk.

Jayson.

Hi All,

I haven't posted for a while but still pop in now and again to see what you are all up to. I must say that the quality of the work being done and the support given by forum users has not changed, it is still first class. Its good to see some more Australians here taking on the challenge.

I thought I would give a very brief update on a few of the things I have been doing.

I was asked a little while ago if I could cut some letters out of 3mm MDF to be threaded onto string and hung up. This was a simple job but something the Mechmate was happy to do it. I first drilled the 2mm holes and then cut the profiles. After drilling the holes I had a complete sheet of MDF that would be wasted if I messed up the tool change but luckily all went without incident. The letters were 85mm high and there was around 300 of them so it took up a complete sheet. I didn't hold the individual parts down, I just relied on a very light final cut to keep the letters in place. This worked fairly well and I only needed to redo about 10. I didn't take any photos of the letters so you will have to be content with the leftover waste.

Attachment 9166

I have also been loitering on another site and found plans for a Velociraptor. Now whoever drew this thing up must have liked big projects as most of the plans you download are for 3mm material whereas this one was for 10. I didn't have any 10mm MDF so I had to enlarge it a little to fit the 12mm that I had. Strangely enough when scaled to this size and nested correctly it takes up a complete 1200 x 2400mm sheet.

Attachment 9165

And from one extreme to the next. As stared previously, I have made a few things for peoples aircraft and I was asked if I could make a panel to replace one that was now outdated. The panel is make with perspex and is 165mm long and 26mm high. As always the first thing I did was try to make it on the Mechmate. Now I do have other machines that I have built that would have been capable of doing this for me but I was sure that the big blue machine would be good enough. I was not disappointed. The first photo shows the original panel at the top and the new one I made underneath. The photo is not the best but it shows the results. The perspex was painted black and then engraved with a V cutter through the paint. I decided to see what it would look like if I mirrored the cad drawing and viewed the perspex from the back, the results are in the second photo. I must say that in person the actual panels look much better that the photos. Just for referance the text on these is 2.5 mm high. Once again 2 thumbs up to this wonderful machine and its creator.

Attachment 9163

Attachment 9164

Lastly I had a little incident with my spindle coolant. The float switch stuck on but there was no coolant flowing (maybe someone accidentally turned it off :o). There was no damage done as I realised what had happened within a few moments but it could have been bad so I installed a flow rate sensor the same as Skippy (Paul) as purchased. It took an amount of head scratching and time but I finally got it into EMC2 and it works great. The reading only updates once every 4 seconds but this is often enough as if the coolant flow reduces below 600mL/Min the spindle will stop in less than 5 seconds. It usually sits at around 720mL/Min.

Attachment 9162

Thats it for now. I look forward to reading the progress of others.

Regards,

Jayson.

Nice work Jayson!!
I love it!!

Cheers
Tony.

Hello Jayson,

I'm sorry in advance, if my question is incorrect :). Could you please explaind a bit deeper how to connect LinuxCNC to Huanyang VFD via ModBus and give a link to flow sensor and explain a bit it's connection to the software. Thanks a lot! I'm complete newbie in CNC world.

Regards, Sergejus.