Author: josh

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Little less stressed now after a few weeks being overworked.

Right as one on my side projects is now done for another month. i can get back to doing enjoyable bits and get to finally clean up my workspace. get everything up and running and ready to work.

So last nights and tonight project is a freebie for my son’s nursery sports day for the toddler group some medals. with the heatwave starting to rush in not sure how much i can do over the next day or so but going to crack on and get the last 28 medals run tonight water temps allowing.

Designed a 2D trophy to give to the toddler and baby rooms of son’s nursery 28 per sheet.

I taped up some 3mm plywood after i had sanded both sides with 400 grit sanding disc. placed it on my honeycomb bed top left. hit play and away the 50-watt laser went. i decided to crudely wire up my water temp gauge the water temp had started out at around 22c when i started to engrave

around 1hr later after the hole sheet had engraved the water temp was up a 29.9c

My temp wired water gauge in side ambient room temp gauge

This is my first attempt at mass production of a product and was an approx 2 hr of engraving and cutting of the medals with the worry of water temp raising 33.2c.

getting hot need a chiller.

this fun little project had given me some worries about water temperatures in the man cave.

I had found an original CW-5000 for £399 they had 11 in stock yesterday went to order today and they have sold out argh so going to bag some ice tonight and add to my distilled water.

Day 2 of opperation sports day medals and getting the mancave to opperatnal .

27 medals to go do love my 50watt laser so reliable fired up laser loaded lightburn put the new sheet of taped plywood and away we go.

final 4 engraving before the cut out pass.

All done and now to take all the tape off them 1 down 37 to go

taken off the tape off yash medal. going to also wipe with wihite viniger.

been a busy night on the tidying the cave now have a clean work bench getting a lot or the draws labeled up as need some organisation in the cave. starting to come together.

That’s me done for the night next operation is sorting the large form printer and my Prusa Mk3 both back online thinking about making some wall mounted spool holders as my enclosed one seem to be jamming up on me. Need to get the CR-10 up and working as well have to calibrate the machine.

Next project on the laser I have a stack of placemats to engrave for our holiday let but going to have to watch the weather and clean out the water tank and replace the dirty water. so will be doing that over the next week will cover the process and the tidying up of the cave at the same time.

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Spring cleaning in progress as fed up of not being able to use all my machines lack of space.

Have in a three-meter Octagon is not the easiest of places to house as much equipment as i have. also as it has windows on 4 sides. So as i have Wednesday off with my son i had been into the local DIY store to grab some screws bits for another project i have been doing. This was a few weeks ago.

I picked up some 10 cm x 5 cm timber and sheet of plyboard to make a cover that went over the winds so i could mount my parts boxes. i had managed to hand saw down the sheet of ply and mounted over the window.

i then added screwed new parts draw i had picked up in the Aldi for £8.99 and my Budweiser sign. looked ok but was just a place to put parts.

Window cover board that i put to give me more storage space.

It worked well but was not quite what i wanted. I had just designed a template for holding Placemat and Coaster.

New jig for holding wooden placemats as have a dinner set to do for our house.

I then started to run a batch of placemats and coasters for our holiday rental property.

Engraved in Wooden placemat The Hollies Logo our rental property in wales.

As this was running I thought i would make a start reorganising things. so the Budweiser sign has been relegated to the attic. i move 2 of my other parts boxes around and dump bins allowing for a new shelf.

makes more sense having all my nuts and bolts fuses crimps and components in one place.

I then moved the dump bins racking so they were next to each other. I had an IKEA shelf we were going to use in the house. that i have installed for the moment above the racking.

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Just got to sort through all dump bins and add to other storage.

i have started to print brackets for filament storage from the 3D printing nerds channel. So i will have shelving for the 2 boxes of filament i have freeing up more space hopefully. However, my Prusa decided to jam yesterday so will have to wait till come back from wales next week to fix.

Just before we it decided to jam up.

As i am working on the map and paid jobs i thought i would get everything up and running and remove bits i don’t need down to wales.

As then can do stuff when i am not in London so my K40 is going to be shipped off to wales along with the Prusa MK2s MMU and clear some space up for stock and parts.

this will be happening next month as will use a man and a van to transport bed and other bits as holiday rental property we have been developing is finally coming online should be available to rent in the next few months.

Next racking unit to sort is the CNC and vinyl cutter as its become a dumping ground and remove redundant bits ie water buckets for cooling as changed for a smaller type.

will be nice to actually get in the cave and be able just to work. Will be adding a download section to the web site so all my projects can be downloaded for free. maybe a project section to get some feedback and collaborate with some other bloggers.

Right got a 208 mile drive later after the day job hoping it will be a easy run.

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Let’s start a fun project for a change. Part 3 (At last)

Sorry for the delays in getting part 3 out i have had some teething issues with the lightburn but i have got a new way of tackling the issue.

The plan

going to break the cost up into a matrix grid of 8 squares and then cut the outline this will then be glued on to a bigger ply board that has been washed in blue to give sea effect.

after that, i will then cut each individual counties for wales. and then apply them to the large scale map.

Ok so that is the map sorted its now road names and places that i have to figure out how to apply. one mode of thinking is that just engrave them over the top of the counties another one is cut them out and glue them on top of the map. this will be my next thing to play with will post images of progress and testing as i so please bear with me.

now to find a some one to cut me a 1001 mm x 909 mm 6mm bit of plywood to act as backing board wilts i play with ideas on adding roads names and places of interest.

the joys of developing Technics for this fun project. next part to follow soon.

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been a bit hectic with the day job

but an update is due i have been playing with the map a bit more have offset the roads to make the bolder on the map have also removed some names and features.

getting ther

more updates to follow soon.

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Let’s start a fun project for a change. Part 2

Managed to run the shading matrix now it’s not given me as many usable shades as i would have hoped but have a good 14 shades. think i need i have run the cutting matrix 2 times and will probably run it one more time to see if i can extract more shades in the future but for the time being i will run a total test. on 1 sheet of A3 wood but make it look as if 2 sheets. let’s begin part 2.

there was a error in my programming as 175mms line ran 2 times.

First run off the test matrix. can see the bottom scan line is way too burnt as predicted in last post.

tape removed form matrix

I removed the bottom line and made text bigger i also messed with speed of scan of text to make it clearer. Link here for SVG and here for LB files has been requested

modified file got at least 8 shades for counties

Still not happy with the overall test but i have identified the following shades for the map. i have named them so i can adjust accordingly going to run first a map just showing outline and counties.

  • 65% Power 400 mm/s Anglesey
  • 65% Power 350 mm/s Spare
  • 65% Power 300 mm/s Flintshire
  • 65% Power 275 mm/s Spare
  • 65% Power 250 mm/s Carmarthenshire
  • 65% Power 225 mm/s Ceredigion
  • 65% Power 200 mm/s Denbigshire
  • 65% Power 175 mm/s Powys
  • 65% Power 150 mm/s Gwynedd
  • 30% Power 300 mm/s South Wales
  • 30% Power 275 mm/s Conwy
  • 30% Power 250 mm/s Pembrokeshire
  • 30% Power 225 mm/s Spare
  • 30% Power 200 mm/s Wrexham
  • 30% Power 175 mm/s Monmouth

Now to assign the shades to the map. as i have divided the map into multiple layers this will not be too hard to do just a little time-consuming.

shading assigned to the map

now to save it for a scaled test run to 300 x 500 bit of plywood I will probably have to run it slightly smaller as layout as constraints of scale as the final map will be run on 2 x 300 x 500 sheets.

Scaled for 1 sheet of plywood current size 350 mm wide and 380 mm in height

finished test run i will now add roads in different passes but before i do that i need to do a line test later on as i want the lines to be slightly different. but for the time being, going to test with the updated current setting. I also have issues with road names not showing right. as the images below the spaghetti junction so going to limit the map to show main roads in the area i really want to highlight in this map. also going to limit the name of places.

Roads added don’t look quite right.

Next Part: Coming soon

  • Adding Points of interest
  • Scaling and spiting the map over 2 sheets of 500 x 300 plywood
  • Making the map 3D by layering up the counties sea and mainland with roads and rivers i think but this is subject to change.
  • mounting it all in a frame ready to be taken to wales at the end of may.
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Let’s start a fun project for a change. Part 1

Think I have been doing too many mods to machines instead of using them for some fun projects as so I have decided to show you the working of a bit of artwork I am putting together for our holiday home in Wales. this will be multiple layered pieces of art.

I will only cover the basics of the project as if you are used to using Illustrator and light burn you will know what I am talking about if you want more in-depth instructions please feel free to comment on the post. this will probably be over a few parts as going to be some trial an error as never done anything this scale.

part of the map i purchased

So after buying a layered map off maproom.net I then stripped assets from it using the layer selection in Adobe Illustrator. for example, I took counties outlines, place names, roads, road names, coastline rivers and lakes allowing me to take it across to lightburn giving me multiple layers this took a few hours and then to some vector path editing to pull off. I also noticed some issues with some of the vectors not being closed correctly so I had to address them as well.

Carmarthenshire outline selected before export.

I then named layers in ligtburn broke it down into the following layers this point I have not configured powers or speeds. as each county will be shaded differently. and some assets will be lines only were as other assets will be filled or outlined within the program. So cuts are just for reference at this moment in time I will post final speed and powers once I have run the test matrix i have made below

The map looks like currently, it’s oversized as will be cut in sections as will be using multiple sheets of ply to generate different layering to build up the A2 frame it’s going to be housed in. I will be cutting different layers then layering them ie. sea, land, then counties etc will be a bit of experiment.

Map in current form in lightburn

now that is all complete I will be looking at power and shading for different elements. so to start I have taken someone’s design and remixed to show greater ranges and speeds so I can see what different power/speeds achieve. Have named it shading matrix pallet. if you ask I will upload it for testing pleasure.

This is taped so I will not have to clean smoke off the wood think the lower speeds might be charcoal but will see later on tonight. upload my findings in part 2

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Back and rested

Right got back London late last night this week is nearly done will be installing a new bed to the 50 watt laser tomorrow as just had to pay a minimal custom charge.

Should be delivered by parcel force tomorrow so fingers crossed. Tonight operation is fix the new heat bed and add the EZout to my CR-10 as manage to drop control box and rip wires out. before leaving to go to wales.

Still having issues with prob on and off might order a replacement as wanting my CR-10 back up and running.

Next project: end stops on my CNC machine so some drilling and tapping are required to mount end stops and some more mods for the control box as it’s sitting there taking up space if it’s not being used.

just about up to date to with getting steaming solution working will take it for a test drive soon then will probably start to do some small streams on a Wednesday.

Will add another post later hopefully with CR-10 news hoping for good news but got to recompile firmware as well. not happening as son is ill will resume tomorrow

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As last week went to pot

Not setting any goals this week as its a busy weekday job and some RNR. I have got to go pick up some screws today so i can mount my baffle board to window for more tools and space for parts. then got to re assemble gun rack for my air soft weapons and hang some other bit. on new baffle board.

Then depending on time, it’s on to the Prusa Mk2s MMU as I am on a roll of fixing stuff the last couple of week. If I can/cannot fix it will be starting the mammoth print of bits for the Haribo edition as again its bits taking up space that can be used other projects.

Will also be my first time running PETG as a material. hopefully will be easy learning curve.

On other current projects:

Wist, I wait for the EZout probe to clear customs. I am going to run some more calibration prints probably tonight. as did try doing bigger print but had some issues with print sticking to the bed. probably just a tweek to the z hight offset.

over the weekend I have built octopi set up that I am currently getting up to speed via TeamViewer for plugins and adding stream feed to the studio might give it a quick test later see things are running right. once I have finalised that will clone the card and do it for the Prusa Mk3 using the pins off the controller board.

What next up in the cave:

Getting limit switches wired into the CNC machine. then I need to learn how to use it so will probably do this via stream so hopefully will get some help with getting all going.

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Life is good today

Yay works again.

CR-10 fixed don’t know how or why but all back in action god knows what cause of the problem. i ran a m48 probe test spat out some numbers. thought would give it one more go and did some more bed scraping but was for the greater good, i am now running a pre done profile with Simplify3D wish me luck. will post picture once it done

Before I fixed the CR-10 I have been running some squash ball feet for the printer, on my Prusa mk3. As they were all done and i managed to pick up some . . squash balls on the way home. AI decided to fit them see if dampeners will help with a ringing issue I have currently on te CR-10

Squash ball feet

nice and easy to fit using printers standard hard ware t-nuts and 4 dunlop double dots

3 feet fited one to go

been setting up my stream pad applications are all set just working what short cuts i am going to need. I have swapped over to streamlabs OBS. so I currently working on a setup just designing scenes for the system. I have written system layout ready so I can figure out what i need to need to buy camera wise and lighting. aiming to get some stuff up soon little nervous about the response I will get to my streaming.

Stream deck

and one finished cube next to 1 and 2 think its the best .

The first one is lasted version of print new profile. as the other 2 are relay wobbly.

now for the gramazon print if all is good or do I wait for EZOUT before I print. something that long as would be an pain in the arse if I run out of filament.

As i was on a roll with squash balls so brought 4 more and printed some more feet for my Mk3 will be fitting them tonight.

Feet for the Mk3

Will be fitting the feet tomorrow as today been with my boy so just been running bits in the background have set 90 % of my stream studio up and the stream deck is coming together.

done some diy cutting of boards and 2 x 4 for a frame im hanging in the cave for new tool rack will take some pictures when its up cheap way to add space

I have printed a frame mounted pi case for the CR-10 that i have modified through breakage so now open frame as the supports popped out the frame when they were removed.

will add some images tomorrow going to set up octopi tomorrow on the CR-10 as will make printing remotely easier also going to do the same for the prusa as have a spare pi kicking around.

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Well just when i was getting someware 10 steps forward 3 steps back

Been creative on the design front for some side projects i have been doing with the wife, but frustrating week so far Mondays joy ended in probe acting up have fixed some of my issues with the printer as now got no layer shift as z-axis was not level but will need to do some more debugging of settings have got a profile to try as well but I need to fix the issue with EZABL. the highs and lows of modifing equipment.

Think my EZABL probes gone faulty. I have a few more tests to run before I have to order a new one. but has messed with my schedule a little bit.

I am cracking on as I want to get it fixed did manage to get it to crash into new bed last night so slightly annoyed not much damage.

I hoping it’s not a damaged probe will run the M48 g-code command as this should let me know if the probe has gone to the scrapheap in the sky.

But now for some good news

Have managed to get my Original Prusa i3 Mk3 working again there was 1 bit of broken filament in the bond-tech gearing and one in the sensor now all removed and printing well. So currently turning out upgrade bits for the CR-10 at the moment running squash ball feet for it got one more to run tonight I will then run some other modifications. may invest in the upgrade to an mk3s in the near future. but for the time being, I am happy might raise the z hight by a small bit as looks like it scraping on the first layer a little.

Last night I did manage to clear some more junk from the man cave so getting there just the realisation I have too much stuff as I clear it. but can see the floor again.

Thursday items to do tonight.

So tonight I will Hopefuly have some more tinker time with the probe on the CR-10 and I will be installing team-viewer on the cave computer as then can remotely work on the configuration for OBS and Stream pad as a need to get them up and running ready for streaming.

Whats coming up in the cave over the next week or so.

as I am on a roll of braking/fixing stuff will give the Original Prusa i3 Mk2s mmu ago this weekend as then I will have a mini print farm working hopefully if not I might just turn it back to an Mk2s only and sell on the mmu part of the kit. or buy the Mk2.5s upgrade giving me removable bed and some of the mk3 functions just not the 24v parts.

Just ordered a Honeycomb bed for the 50 watt from aliexpress so should have it in the next week or so. This will help me when cutting of plywood should make it easier to do as can use magnets on warped wood. for acrylic I wills till use standoffs.

EZOUT is on its way over from the USA so waiting for notification of it arriving awaiting customs charges. will cover installing that shorlty and document it.

Fun with CNC machine adding end stops to it before i start to play with it properly.. After I have done this can start playing with some designs I have put together and some ideas i have for fun projects along the way.