What is it with MechMates and the attraction to lethal snakes - we might have to post a user warning :D or would it only apply to those living in the desert?

Isnt the MAMBA a snake? :eek: They probably attract one another. :)

The black mamba is the longest venomous snake in Africa, with an extremely potent neurotoxic venom that attacks the nervous system, and cardiotoxins which attack the heart; the bite is often fatal to humans without access to proper first aid and subsequent antivenin treatment, because it shuts down the lungs and heart.

The "Mamba" name for the current version of the MechMate has mostly fallen into disuse because this is the only version we have now. I had to introduce a new version (not venom) name because there were a couple of detail design changes that made parts non-interchangeable with the previous "classic" version.

(New folk are starting to ask why the reference to the MechMate as a Mamba)

Looking good Ed,

I new you'd like that high volume dust control system. The guy's think we don't do much cutting, but it's just a good vacuum. :)

On a side note: Killed another rattler and one got away under the house this past weekend. I was not crawling on my belly after that one. My wife was saying that we have killed 8 this year already.

Congrats Ed, You got speceial #8R !!!!!!!
She looks beautiful:)

Foam cutting
 

I finally got the foam cutting working good. I am still looking for info on the EPP foam cutting but someone told me a tile grout bit works best on the EPP, so when I have time I will try that. I made a short video with my camera of cutting some 1/4" bluecore. The project is some CAP 232 flat foam radio controled airplanes. The ones I am cutting out I scaled down from a full size set of plans with vcarve and increased the wing surface areas to make them fly better at slow speeds. I use a v bit to bevel the leading edge of control surfaces and trailing edge of wings. Every thing else is cutt with a 1/8" soft plastic bit. It is hard to find the bluecore foam but dow corning makes a 1/4" fanfold that comes in sheets that will unfold to 48" x 50' that will work good for this purpose.
http://s148.photobucket.com/albums/s...ombluecore.flv

Also got a job making a sign for our county courthouse the other day, it turned out really nice and they liked it alot. Keep getting jobs like that and someday I will have it paid for:)

Ed,
Did you scan in the plans from paper or did you have full size dxfs for the plans? Just wondering as I have done some RC stuff in the past and that was an interest for my machine when it is done. :)

I don't have a scanner, I am not sure how you would do it with a scanner unless you did sections and then later joined them together on the computer. I started out just googling a search for rc airplane designs and found a website that has the full sets of plans for most common rc planes and just copied it to vcarve and deleted the unwanted parts then rescaled it and streched out the wing surfaces to what looked like a workable size. Some sites have plans for foam airplanes that are already the correct scale like this one:

Heath, what kind of planes were you thinking of cutting?
i found a cool website that has free plans. Some are already in .dxf format. Some are jpeg and some are pdf files. I have been doing the foam flat planes from depron, bluecore and EPP foam, so the pdf or jpeg's will work great for me. I haven't figured out yet how to convert pdf files. When I am in Acrobat reader i cant seem to do much with it ??? Guess I am computer illiterate still:o.

Any way check out this website. You only have to register to download the files.:)
http://plans.aerofred.com/cat5.htm?page=3

Ed,
Thanks for the link! :D I was doing mostly 40 to 60 size glow sport type models when I was doing the rc thing about 15 years ago. School, marriage and family have put some of my interests aside for a while. Now that my son is getting older he is showing interest in my old rc stuff so I thought that would be fun for us to do when I get my cnc going. The flat foam models sound easy to do with the cnc. How well do they fly? Sorry to cluttler your thread, feel free to email me on this stuff. :):)

I am interested... Maybe in the topic of "Things that inspire". Or... if Ed doesn't mind, just keep going here.

I like the way they fly very much. There is no airfoil so your flying off the prop all the time. I have only been doing is for about 6 months now. Getting alot better at it though. This guy here is insaine at flying indoor foamy's
Guessing by looking at his flying ability that it is about all he does. haha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv20sV53_Tw

Ed,

Do you have a website for the plane? It seems very interesting.

Thanks

After seeing this video, I’m too getting hook... Have to be honest, never seen these abilities out of an RC plane :eek:
Thanks for sharing this ED !
Robert ;)

Did you mean the one the guy on youtube was flying? I haven't found a pattern for that peticular plane but the website up above has some just as good in pdf format. I am not sure exactly how to get from pdf to dxf yet but even a photo will work and you can trace it in a cam program like vcarve and scale to any size you want. I have been flying them at about 24" wing span. To me that is a good size. Motor sizing and picking an electronic speed control and battery took me quite some time to figure out but if you do enought web surfing on the subject there is alot out there on it. The hinges are usually just simple straping tape. You can get a cheap motor and ESC from lightflight.com for about $15 and a cheap battery from towerhobbies.com for about 15-$20. Micro servos are about 6-$10 each you will need 3. 2-3mm carbon rods from bphobbies.com to stiffen the fuselage and wings. If you have a radio and reciever you can make one for well under $100. The best motors are cd rom drive motors out of old computers. Once you get all that stuff you can use it over and over if you crash alot like I did and still do occasionally. There is also a forum like this one that is a big and has alot of nice folks, it is www.wattflyers.com

Another fun thing happening now with local clubs with these small inexpensive foam planes and flying wings is combat flying where you attack other persons plane or try to cutt the streamers trailing from other planes while they try to cutt yours. They also have light weight LED type lights for rc planes now that makes it possible to fly at dusk or even dark if your pretty good at it. I haven't tried any of this yet but my neigbor and I are working on a combat flying wing that looks like a cross between the f-117 stealth and something from a batman movie. We should have one together pretty soon.

So i had posted in the motion control software thread about this but thought it may be faster to post it here.
My computer crashed and it was unfix able so i have a new windows xp computer up and running with mach 3. I have the motors running but I have encountered an issue that maybe someone can answer. My X slave motor is set as Slave A under the Slave settings, The issue is the motor travels in the same direction no matter which way you try to jog the gantry. Does anyone know if this is a ports and pins setting that still needs addressed or is this a problem with the PMDX?

So Ed !!....What's up ??
Howzz the beast (you... :p)...doing ?!
later;)

Hi Robert, were all doing good over here. Hope your doing well also? Yes I had a computer setback. I think the lightning won. It's up and running now. The only thing I have not set back the way it was is the router. It's on all the time so I have to use the manual switch on the z car to turn it on and off. I got busy and had to pull off it awhile.

up and running once again......
 

After what seems like forever ….. had a computer crash ...then trying to replace the computer with xp os ….then trying to get my mach3 again and set up. Its been fun.

I wore out the bearings on my first router so I found a 2-1/4 hp porter cable that fits in the same mounts. I had everything running well except for the motor relay for the router. I kept trying and had given up on it but I checked again today and I had forgot to put the pin # from the BOB. set that to pin 14 and now all is good.
Since monitors and led screens are dirt cheap now I ordered a 32" led screen for $99 (LOL) and also ordered a rolling stand.

Is anyone using 2.4g Bluetooth mouse and keyboard? Just wondering if the signal from keyboard to the computer might interfere with cutting on the mechmate??

Hey Ed !!
Glad to reed you're "red beast" is back in business....
Wishing all the best and.....looking forward to reed more !
Later, ;o)

Ed, I am using a Bluetooth mouse/keyboard combo with no issues. Can carry the keyboard all around the machine with no loss of connectivity.

Ted