This is one of them projects i have been meaning to do for some time.
I know that my honeycomb bed is ruffly 8mm in diameter in each hole. So using light burn I made 3 x 8mm circles and 1 x 12mm circle. cut them out of 3mm acrylic i had kicking around from the laser alignment project.
the design.
Looked in box of M3 bolts had a load of 30 x M3 hex bolts in my box and some square nuts.
to assemble
put 2 of the 8mm circles on the bolt, then put the 12 mm circle on the bolt and finally add the last 8mm circle tigten down with square nut.
Assembled prototype
Need to clean my bed
perfect for projects that need to be stood of the bed and stops micro fractures in acrylic.
the 50watt Co2 laser cutter is a great machine but does need modifications to make it great. the aiming led diode is as more of a line than a dot and with no focus its not adjustable. I was one of the laser Facebook groups. were a saw a post on modifying laser pointer to form a crosshair. so I asked for a copy of the designs. and started on this journey.
So I have removed the current diode that interestingly was not soldered. so I will be swapping leases I have added a jst female connector to the led wiring. I will also be adding a switch so can turn it on and off. I have soldered the male end to the lasers.
Female JST connector soldered in place
prototype have shorten the lead as way too long
the 2 designs i tried first of all
theses will be placed at 90 degrees to the tube in an acrylic holder then aligned under the nozzle. the reason for the jst connector is I can then swap it over to each tube lens.
wanted line lasers damit.
tested last night and figured out they had sent the wrong pointers so crosshairs. (note to self, test things before soldering them) not worried will use for some other projects i have in my list of things to make or design.
I decided to hedge my bets and try 2 laser cut designs first one did not work with the line lasers fingers crossed on the second one. have changed the measurements slightly on the design to make it a tighter fit will test fit this design later don’t line up might be thickness I going to do some more testing and do one more design as well to see if I can get it lined up.
Argh another bust time to look for 3d printed files.
As you can see it’s nowhere near dead center
right thingiverse design attempt number 3 and away it goes.
going down the 3d printed route as well.
Another non-working idea as designed for smaller led diode modules. so that again was for smaller diode laser dot it replicated standard hardware. after had metal and printed version, I inverted the 2 diode holders and lightbulb moment.
where i got my idea black is original hardware violet is a design for 6mm diode
So i made a sketch of the part and then modified it using some 3d modeling.
The idea to make a bigger version of the arm
The Sketch in fusion 360
Rendered idea
Early morning 3D printing
Parts ready to test
Right now to test it. out and see if it all fits will publish the files if so. wish me luck. little loose but concept works have changed the inner dimensions from 13mm to 12mm reprinted it now to test fit and tighten it all down if it works might re design the center as well.
perfect now to make it square.
I have published the remix here you will also need 2 x of the centre the tube mounting off this design by billkaroly from Thingiverse available here. You will also need some 3mm bolts and nuts.
Next modification will be moving and permanently mounting mA meter temp gauge upgrade. adding some button for lighting, laser marker and ultimate air assist on / off.
Hi every one just about to get my mods underway on the 50watt laser
I ordered a lens kit and its some were between USA and UK
have the ultmate air assist ready to install.
just need to pick up a 50L silent compressor some fitments and should be ready for next project.
the good news is I am cancer-free and I am also covid and lung infection-free to just resting up before I get on fully with projects, I am also waiting on dell to rebuild my laptop.
yes i know was a ruff month for me but back time to make stuff and be merry.
looking for a good deal on a compressor and also looking for a dust extractor as well for the cnc machine.
Being on Facebook I was helping someone and was told my lens should be the other way up now I have tested this but still not 100% sure I am right.
the principle cuve should be up on laser well mine is down.
so I modified some ones cut test file and ran it in both orations
modified file.
The result I know I shouldn’t be down the cave and suffered afterwards but as you can see the orientation cut better with lens down power was set at 70% which is my laser max point. I then used the power scale function on light burn to run thought different power percentage. however i am yet to see if focal point has moved due to the lens being rotated. that will be my next test but need to get better.
not sure as looks like focal point has moved i might do a ramp test.
so next I am going to design or borrow a ramp test to see if the focal point has moved. with the lens being reversed as this intriguing me. as anyone who knows me knows my mind is always active.
Update 1
I have ordered a lens kit so now 38.1mm 50.8mm and 63.5 lenses with alignment tool from American Photonics should be he in the next week or so will do some testing with that when it comes. will review it properly so far am impressed with customer services it’s on the route from the USA to our small island. see how much import tax I have to pay.
update 2
currently designing a ramp test as want something i can do in 1 pass and replace the ramp after
Has been a tough month for me i was working in the cave doing the Christmas gifts for friends and family when i developed bad back pain, I thought I pulled something,
Called the 111 non emergency number ended up in an ambience trip to the hospital.
They discovered I had a very bad chest infection. During my stay, I contracted Covid-19 that has I am now covid-19 free but awaiting another operation.
So I will resume doing stuff soon and the rebrand but banned from the mancave doctors orders for 2 to 3 weeks.
going to recover and make 2021 a busier and better year.
sorry for the lack of posts i have been woking on getting some bits done but day jobs
taken president again will hopeful doing some new bits soon. as work sleep repeat is what it’s feeling like ATM but will hopefully get back to my daily blogs soon.
still got printers to fix testing out new air assist for the 50w over the next few days.
As we are working remotly from our holiday rental property i have been teaching my self a new skill as you know me i love to learn stuff and the lack of other tools here.
So went in 50/50 with the wife on an embroidery machine. so been learning how to do designs for it as a new skill to learn. its a completely different way of doing stuff but a fun learning curve.
One day might relocate the cave to wales at some point in the future as would have the space for more equipment and do more projects.
Sorry for not posting for a while been in wales for a few weeks going to be staying down longer as got things that i have to fix in the house and other bit. dont i will be back in 3 weeks for more fun with cnc 3d printing and laser cutting also now teaching my self embroidery so will be doing some fun things with that.
i am going to be with my arcade machine i am going to start stripping it back for the mane conversion project i have in mind. so will be posting some updates.
had an old HP Proliant 350ML G6 kicking around the office we have upgraded to a new server its got a 1.2 tb raid installed and had 5 x spare pair SATA ports. As we are still in lockdown i decided to make the ultimate server on a budget.
you can pick this server up fro around £150 on eBay complete. it was running 16gb of ram and 2.15 GHz processor with 4 core processor. and had a spare port for the second CPU.
I had to buy a second hand mother board due to me damaging second CPU socket and killing the monther board £30 for one shipped with 24gb of memory with it.
I also removed DVD drive to give me 1 extra SATA port for a SSD
on eBay, i picked up 2 x matched CPU 2.56 and 9 rams 4gb DIMMs for around £65 i picked up a GTX 1050 GPU and sound card for around £160 salvaged a 4 port USB card. i was going to use some old 2tb drives out of a raid server but when i the disk performed health check was getting some errors so decided as this project is sponsored by my company would invest in some NAS 4tb drives £104 each so got 5 one will act as a parity drive. also using a 500gb SSD for cache drive files. oh and extra fan for missing CPU slot and fan baffle for £36
i have also added ordered 2 matched six core cpu 3.05 Ghz maxing out the board for £40 will upgrade them when they arrive as coming from asia.
So all in if had brought it from the net i would be in under £1000. 16tb server with 60gb of ram 4 Gb GPU.
the hardware went together very easily i started off by fitting memory to the second processor DIMM slots. i then fitted changed out the first CPU and added the second one. do love big towers only got 2 cuts from heat sink and frame.
All came today and all installed looking nice and full inside the case build is all done. just fits thankfully a little tight in areas. but looking good.
now to turn on V-rt so i can use pass through tech and turn on some other features.
Setting up Unraid got 32gb USB flash drive download installer and flash drive plug it into a USB slot. In my case, the motherboard had an internal USB slot then on boot get into the bios and change boot order i did USB, CD and HD. the system will then boot USB first.
first boot takes a few mins you are greeted with the login screen. the user name is root password is blank.
you are then greeted with a register for trial or buy screen click trial.
would recommend adding community app plugin there are lots of guides on this but basically you to unraid web site and look in the footer for apps store and look for plugin url then go to add the plugin and then past it there a few seconds later all installed.
next up you going to need to build an array in my case its 5 drives, 4 for data and one parity drive for back up just in case one drive fails .
next up is adding services and some virtual machines going to be running Windows 10 and Ubuntu desktop 20.4.
First you will need to enable the array and set dockers going. would recommend looking on you tube space invader one seems to have some good tutorials.
I am currently clearing down 2 TB drive so i can make a back up of business array then will have an off-site backup as well as the current live version. this will live sync every day.
so far i am impressed with the unraid system couple of glitches but stable.
Starting to get things working.
Will update this project as i add to it. have set an octofarm server going and its also managing all the house entertainment. looking at other addons as well. have set up OpenVPN so i can tunnel into the server work from it remotely have 3 virtual machines running. processor seam so working ok till i get the extra 4 cores going 12 cores 24 threads but that’s a few weeks off.
going to be out of London for a week hoping to get one more project done before i leave as have also been running it back to back with wast board. but might break it into two parts as 3d printing side done but now going to work on making some aluminium clamps with fusion 360 and CNC machine. this is a new idea so as going to be in deepest darkest wales will use spare time to teach myself manufacturing.
Will post the 3D brackets project tomorrow or Saturday.
You must be logged in to post a comment.