CNC pick-and-place machine needed!

After spending hours and hours last night assembling and soldering just a couple of PCBs, the need for some sort of automation is growing - especially if we're going to realise the dream of actually making and selling a few miniature instruments.

So we're back to investigating a miniature CNC-type pick-and-place machine.
We've already got some stepper motors working and pulled apart a few printers and scanners, and have had no luck in finding exactly the types of steppers, belts and pulleys we were hoping to use.

Which has lead us down a slightly different path - instead of determining which types of stepper motors and belt-drive system we're going to use up-front, we're going to build a system which anyone else can build too - but using parts that can easily be scavenged from old computer hardware.

We dismantled an old Lexmark Z73 and found some useful looking stuff - stepper motors, carriage rods, belts and so on. None of these match our original cnc requirements (1.8deg steppers, 20-tooth pulley, 5mm pitch belts) but we've decided to change our approach, and build a machine using the parts we can get hold of. We'll write some software to drive our custom-made stepper board, so that you can simply enter a few parameters and let the computer do all the tricky calculations.

This sounds like we're heading towards Mach3/traditional CNC type ground - the original plan was to just build something that would work "out-of-the-box" without lots of difficult setting up and parameter fiddling. But then again, buying all new hardware is going to get quite costly for us, or anyone else wanting to make a similar machine, whereas re-using and recycling old computer hardware is a much more eco-friendly way to go about making stuff in general.

Here's our starting point - a stepper motor and a timing belt.

The stepper motor is a Mitsumi M42SP-6NK.

A quick look on Google returns the datasheet, telling us that it's a 7.5 degree motor, runs at 12V and has a peak current of 400mA. We marked one of the teeth on the cog, then counted them clockwise, and discovered that this motor is fitted with a 15-tooth pulley

The timing belt didn't reveal much - the serial number OPM 300766 returned nothing of interest, so we had to do a bit of investigating....

To find out the pitch of the belt, we need to measure from the centre of one tooth to the centre of another. This belt has tiny teeth, so we marked out 20 teeth using some masking tape and measured across the tops of the teeth with a steel rule (marked in 0.5mm spacing). Despite the photo's appearance, we made it 24mm across 20 teeth, making the belt pitch 1.2mm

This may or may not be correct. The belt may even use imperial measurement (e.g. 1.2mm = 0.0472 inches - it may be a 0.05" pitch belt and we've just not measured it properly!) All this can hopefully be corrected in software once we've actually got the machine built, entered a few parameters and calibrated everything fully!

Miniature Explorer and Flying V

Following the Brighton Mini MakerFaire, and taking a few days off to help out at BuildBrighton (setting up stalls, packing away again, moving to the new hackspace and so on) it's time to concentrate on actually getting these miniature instruments finished!

Aaron from Oomlout came all the way down from Halifax to Brighton, especially for the MakerFaire but had already expressed an interest in the miniature guitars, so we demonstrated our early prototype. He wanted to buy one there and then! So we've set about making a few different guitars.

 Here's a Flying V being put together in green. We've only got 1.5mm in white, so all the scratchplates and accessories have to be white for now - so we're trying to pick colours that will show up the scratchplate well (we're sick of making stuff out of red, black would be a bit boring, blue a bit dark....)

Below is an Explorer-shaped guitar (as played by U2's The Edge, and James Hetfield of Metallica - although they tend to stick to black rather than bright sunshine yellow!)

Then we had to make a whole load of pick-ups and embellishments. In this case, we're cutting them from 3mm black acrylic - the square-shaped ones at the bottom are humbuckers and the middle bits get covered in chrome sticker to make them look authentic (although for a Les Paul type guitar, the pick-ups are usually gold coloured, rather than silver, but we've only got silver!)

A few different guitar accessories - single-coil pick-ups, humbuckers, and bridge supports

The guitars being assembled - the red stratocaster is our working prototype. The others are new designs, which have taken quite a bit of trial-and-error to get right!

Why I Love My 3D Printer by Schuyler St Leger, Ep 86

I saw this video posted online a few months ago which was created last February by Schuyler St. Leger.  A ten year old young man explains better than anyone I have seen thus far on how a Makerbot 3D printer works and what you can do with it. I've posted it again here for those of you who do know know about this wonderful little machine.

Brighton Mini MakerFaire

This Saturday, 3rd September 2011, saw the first Mini MakerFaire come to Brighton.
And what a fantastic makerfaire it was - with over 5,000 people attending the one day event, running from 10am to 6pm. There are loads of photos all over the 'net, but videos are harder to come by - perhaps because it was such a hot and noisy event!

It was really nice to see so many HackSpaces attending - some of the more established ones like London and Nottingham, as well as the newer fledgling spaces like Manchester (Hac-Man, you gotta love it!)

There were some fantastic individual people displaying weird and wonderful gadgets too.  There were loads of midi- and arduino- based music making machines...

...a guy in a white coat so he must have been a bona-fida scientist...

...magic mouldable rubber compounds for hacking even greater ideas....

...create-your-own-furniture design and prototyping services...

...amazing self-balancing skateboards...

...H2O-based music making (probably playing Hadel's Water Music - see what I did there?)....

...local celebrity Jane Bom Bane...

...wasn't the only person creating weird and wonderful hats....

Everyone had their own personal favourites. For me, the robotic drawing arm, part of the AI-Kon Project was just incredible to watch. Stylised drawing - with a biro no less!

There were 3D-printers...

...a soldering workshop and drop-in hack room...

...a whole world of craft and techo-textile mash-ups...

... including beautiful flowers from recycled materials...

... and workshops where you could sit and make your own...

There were stunning mosiacs....

...chain-mail-like metallic textiles...

...knitted and felt-making classes...

... rampaging robots who squirted unsuspecting passers-by, and blew smoke rings at them from behind!

There were intricate gingerbread mini-masterpieces...

... a giant etch-a-sketch...

... geeks....

... and nerds of all ages!

There was loads more besides - but by this point I'd just forgotten all about the camera and was wandering around, staring in wide-eyed marvel at all the brilliant (and bizarre) things there.

One of the best things about the makerfaire is that it was a truly family event - mums and dads were amazed at the technology and work that had gone into a lot of the exhibits, while the kids laughed and squealed at anything that beeped, farted, or flashed. The overall feeling at the makerfaire was that the Maker Movement in the UK has finally got a bit of momentum behind it. And with so many kids taking an interest, it's not just a middle-aged big-boys-club of shed-dwellers: making stuff is really accessible to everyone now - it's an exciting time to be a geek or a nerd!

1912 Indian Motorcycle Photo To Drawing and Da Vinci Homer Simpson

Been a pretty busy day today working on converting a 1912 Indian motorcycle racer into a drawing that I can use to do an engraving with my CNC machine.  The drawing was pulled up in Corel software and traced over line by line as you can see below.

 

This is what the rear wheel looked liked after it was traced and the photo was removed.  Starting to look pretty good at this point.
  Next the work continued on to complete the motorcycle as you see below of the photo and the completed drawing.  The hardest part was the engine and all the detail that I put into it.  This was a good day to work on this kind of thing as it has been raining most of the day and that is about the amount of time it took to create the drawing.....all day.



Below is what the complete Indian motorcycle racer looks like as a photograph complete and as a drawing complete.  I will convert the drawing to a Windows Meta File or WMF and then it will be converted again to create the Gcode to run in my CNC machine.  I think it will be a good engraving to make something that is sizable.  I thought possibly that I might add the Indian Head Logo behind the motorcycle.  This would be an easy thing to accomplish with Corel.  Probably will take at least a couple more hours to set it up.  I will have to look into it and see what it will look like.

On another drawing I worked on a few days ago I traced out another Homer Simpson that I want to do an engraving of on my CNC machine.  I call it Da Vinci Homer or what a lot of people are calling it online is Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man - Homer Simpson.  Homer is shown holding a TV remote, a can of Duff bear, a pastry, and a hot dog.  Behind him is a giant doughnut. Again I think this will be a fun engraving to put on a lot of different things. I've already ran a test on Mach 3 and it will take a little over an hour to do the engraving so that's not terribly long.

Welcome to The Tinker's Workshop

Hello Everyone,
  Welcome to my blog site.  I have been working on a lot of different projects over the past couple of years and I thought that it would be a good idea to get this out to the rest of the world.  As you've seen from the opening page I am a retired designer and am still designing, dreaming, and building all kinds of stuff for the fun of it.  I am a member of the Quad City Collaboration and Hackerspace or QC Co-Lab for short and have a lot of fun with the great people there.  We share ideas, projects, stories and each others company so it's always a good time.  In my blog you will find past projects that I have completed, am currently working on, and new ideas that will be future projects.  The CNC machine that you will find photos of under "Completed Projects" was constructed with a good deal of help from the guys at the QC Co-Lab.  They helped me get through all of the electronics work that needed to be done and I built the rest of the machine by hand in my tiny basement workshop.
  In the coming months I plan on building a duplicate of this machine for the QC Co-Lab so that everyone there can have access to such a wonderful tool.  I will document this build as I go along in my blog here so that everyone following my exploits will benefit by what I have already learned and maybe you will be inspired to build your own CNC machine for your workshop.
  Also on the blog are photos of my composite three section kayak that I can easily haul on my Mini Cooper, a cargo trailer for my motorcycle with custom coolers, and a composite recumbent bicycle.  The kayak was a great project and a lot of fun to use also.  I designed and built the kayak from scratch again in my little workshop and it was launched a year ago last July.  The recumbent bicycle also in the completed projects page is a composite fiberglass construction.  I'm still trying to find time to get the tweaking done on the bike but the good news it is rideable and a very unique bike.
  Another section in my blog is the work I have done using Blender 3D software.  This is a 3D animation, render and game software that you can create either pictures or full animations.  Games have been used with the software but with everything I am into I simply have not found the time to check that portion of the software out yet.  Not sure if I ever will.  I enjoy working in Blender as it is a great software to learn and create images of new ideas that come into my head.
  One more section on my blog that I must point you to is the Makerbot 3D printer page.  This is a great little printer that will create 3D objects from your computer files.  I've have just begun to start learning this machine over the past year and hopefully will have one of my own in the next coming year.  It will make a great addition to my CNC machine. 
  So this will give you a little idea of what my blog is about and hopefully you will check it out from time to time to see what new creation I am working on. Again welcome to my site and I hope all your projects turn out the way you've always planned they would.

Miniature guitar - working prototype

Another exciting day at Nerd Towers as we've finally completed our first working miniature guitar prototype. Not only does the instrument work as expected (touch sensitive guitar frets, and a touch-activated strummer) but the software is coming along quite nicely too.

Although the miniature instruments are HID/USB devices using a simple 8-byte buffer interface to talk back to the PC, some people may be a little uncomfortable working at such a low level. So we're creating an easy-to-use, event-driven COM object, so anyone can create their own custom software to work with the miniature instrument range.

No worrying about bitmasking, byte buffers or retrieving data - all that has been taken care of. Simply create an instance of the COM object, and write your code to respond to events such as

• x_instrumentConnected
• x_keyPressed
• x_keyReleased
• x_guitarFretChanged
• x_guitarStrummed

and so on.

Obviously, not all events are available to all instruments.

The key press/release events are specific to the synths, for example, whereas only the guitar and bass ever raise the guitarFretChanged event. Such an exciting post as this wouldn't be complete without a video demonstrating a working guitar - so here goes:

[youtube video goes here]