JOSH'S MANCAVE LIVE – Page 2 – A Place to build and make and modify

24/09/202229/09/2022

How to Modify your GameCube to the Maximum

As i have just purchased a second hand GameCube. I have decided i am going to modify it to the maximum the using the latest mods form 2022 for my 2001 machine

Picoboot modification

So first up I have decided to look modifying one using the Raspberry pico method. There are some options to softmod but they are more costly as can only get the modified memory cards or action replay discs from the states. there are other methods but the cost of these are well over £170 i wont be doing this the methods i have chosen is £14 for a complete Raspberry Pico wires thermal pads memory card and heat sync. I haven’t accounted for solder and flux as i have them in abundance the SD2SP2 PRO adapters all from aliexpress. £3,99

So why would you want to do this well there are several reasons.

To preserve your game collection by being able to back them up
Allow you to play homebrew.
Allow you to play games from other regions.
allow you to run DVD-R discs (if you pot tune)

So as I was away relaxing in Florida I was searching eBay for cheap game cubes i brought 2 one that was modified with Picoboot and one standard box.

why 2 well sniped them both by mistake so will be making them the same and then shifting one back on eBay as need to rase founds for a fiber laser. please donate if you like my posts.

What you will need to teardown you GC

you will need some special tools to open up a Nintendo product. In this case, you will need special 4.8 mm tool available of amazon

to open up the case you need to remove these 4 security screws from here onwards they are cross-head screws. see the image below.

you can now separate the shell.

Next up will need to remove the fan mechanism with 2 screws and unplug the power cable. as you can see mine is very dirty so out with airgun to blow the dust away. these are second hand boxes after all all built around the 2000s

you will now need to remove the optical drive board from the base board this is done by removing the following screws. there is around 15 of them all the same length so as long as they all go back afterwards wont be a issue. have pictured below locations.

Put the drive mechanism to one side and time to install the picoboot mod

For the pico boot method, you will need the following.

Raspberry pi pico
23 AWG wiring red black blue purple and orange approx 15 cm long lengths of each
Flux
Solder
Soldering iron
Thermal pads for chips
3D printed bracket
Heat shrink

i brought this kit of ali express for a grand total of £14 with all the parts

Lets start to install the mod so back to the main board.

To do this mod you will need to remove the 6 screws holding the heat sync in place then rock the heat sync carefully as not to damage the board.

if the heat sync is not moving heat the machine up for 15 mins then will come easily with out damaging DA14 which is common if your not delicate with this.

you will now need to solider the wires to the correct place on the lower board. once this is done you will need to route them to the side of the GameCube. see below instructions my board is DOL-001 built in 2001

going to start with black jumping over the 2 pin headers. Next will be the pink and the red wires, To Finish off will do the blue and the orange wires jobs done. Now it add heat shrink and route them through the board now this is done will add some Kapton tape to help protect the wires before re installing the heat sync. montage below

Now to flash the pico you can download the latest firmware here and how to install instructions as if you have dol-101 is different.

Lets get started on flashing plug usb in to pc and then Hold down white button connect via usb drive will mount on pc can let go of white button now. next drag latest version of the firmware picoboot.uf2 over to the folder drive will eject green light will come on your done as simple as that. now disconnect the pico and solder the corresponding pins. make sure you don’t have too much or too little wire

Me being a perfectionist i found this bracket by zedlabz to install the Pico on my machine. as 2 mm 2 screws and bottom bolts to machine for a nice clean install

so over to prusa slicer to make it going to take a wapping12 mins To produce

time to reassemble the machine and make sure it boots.

Format your SD card to FAT32 or exFAT. Download the latest Swiss release from here and grab swiss_rXXXX.dol file, rename it to ipl.dol and copy to the root of your SD card. it works nice and simple.

SD2SP2 & SD2SP2 PRO 2022 AND SD MEMORY CARDS

There are 3 current options on market for the GC depending on method of modifying will be how you if you were using a mod chip you would need dvd media to boot in to swiss. In the case of the picoboot you wont need the optical drive unless your booting games off it.

So will need a front end to boot in were as modchip will still mainly read from the drive and then boot off the sd.

so your my options are the followng

SD2SP2 micro sd card reader that hides behind behid the expattion port on the front of the machine willhave to remove port cover to access it easily.

SD2SP2 PRO this is simulare but had an exstention board so it can be accessed from the side of the game cube (this is the one i am going to use.)

Memory card SD reader in standard and Micro sd verisons

all pictured below.

Formatting SD Card (Important)

it has to be fat32 if you want some of the apps to work especialy home brew cheats saves etc. it gave me a headache for a few days till i did some testing. i am using a 256GB micro SD in the SD2SP2 card port the system will support bigger and when the prices drop will put a 1tb drive in there. I know were as the front loading memory cards can be a bit different.

Card structure

Download the latest version swiss and then copy the .dol in to root folder you will need to renamed the to swiss_rXXX.dol to IPL.dol this will allow the system to boot in to swiss you can also launch other systems by naming them a, b, y and x .dol not tried this yet good for the homebrewer.

Using homebrew software

This is primarily why I built this machine as have a love for old school gaming

So have added the following SNES, NES, N64, Sega master system and Mega drive, PC Engine and colecovision. there some others like PSX and scummMV that i will try come back to later

Key points:

You will need to install emulator.dol for each system in the correct Name folders

with in each folder you will need a roms folder and saves folder this will then

the SD Card needs to be formatted fat32

So far i have working the following systems.

N64
Sega master system
Sega mega drive
SNES
NES
Gameboy and Gameboy colour
Gameboy advance
PC Engine

Backing up your games

This is done with very easily using CleanRip insert disc in drive turn GameCube launch app and follow on screen instructions about 30 mins later you will have a full back up on the sd card of your disc ready to launch through swiss.

its not illegal o own back ups of your own games. its is how ever illegal to download them off the internet. unless the are now public domain for historical reasons. like a lot of old games are.

Pot tuning for burnt media

This step will need to be done for all methods methods if your going to use burnt media as most GameCube wont allow you to use DVD-r or +.

to do this you will need need a multimeter set to 2k ohms.

Deepening on model will depend on what figures you should see GC is on. DOL-001 units are usually set somewhere between 450 – 600Ω while DOL-101 units will be a bit lower at around 150 – 250Ω so if the disc is not reading try raising it a bit. and try media again till it boots correctly. as show below.

fist you will need to take the shield off the media drive

just been probing my pot with multimeter and i am getting readings that are very off I have a DOL-001 unit i think it running a 101 drive as I am read 163 ohms so in theory I should be seeing between 450 and 600 ohms were as the model number with DOL-101 should see between 150 and 250 ohms

i know its not a DOL-101 machine as i have digital output.

so i am going to tune it up to 200ohms and see what happens.

Still not reading dvd-r could be my media I’m using does not matter as still reads original games so will do some experimenting with secondary unit.

Adding HDMI Support

there are a few different ways of doing this from cheap to really relay eye wateringly expensive. the holly grail would be the av out component cable costing around £200 followed by the eon HDMI output again around the £170 mark now as i doing this build on a budget I decided go cheap with a £5 cable from AliExpress this was less than impressive as was a cheap upscale washes out the screen hard to play with but good to get me started whilst i waited for more bits to arrieve

I also invested in a £59.99 GC2HDMI Kaico Gamecube GC HDMI this is a AV plug in and play just doubled the scan lines this gave me true 521p output. the difference is incomparable but see below the images from both files. well worth medium outlay

Cheap cable image below on left hand image kaico on the right much better image.

Gameboy Card Cartridge reader addon

these are getting hard to find but as i found on sub £60 without software box or anything else I thought why not as I am going the full hog on this project i also invested in a multi game cart for fun. will also invest in a multi card for GBA as well for fun if it works.

But there’s no software with well homebrew will take care of this with GBI homebrew interface which works like a charm perfect addition for my game cube.

Broadband adapter

So this was only used for one game in total but can now be used for uploading to the game cube remotely thought this might aid with the project well when i can find one for reasonable money.

i have put this hear to talk about the theory of what it can do till i have my hands on one think i will be going to some retro games shows.

24/08/202224/08/2022

New look coming soon

as the cave has evolved over the last few years its time for a site up date this will be happening in the not so near future. probably will be doing this over my holiday and here and there. As you can see the work shop is getting very busy with bits and tools so will be having another clean up and anything i don’t use will be getting rid of. to make space for new project. might also be launching a shop to sell some of my 3d printed designs and custom laser cut stuff to fund future projects.

I will also be taking donations for my ramblings as i want a fiber laser to add to my collection of tools. any manufactures out there wanting some on to show the wares i am happy to do so.

More coming soon i prommis.

21/08/202224/08/2022

Building a Retro gaming machine

there are loads of guides to building retro pi machines. but this is a slightly different build as going to use 1TB SSD image so will be running an SSD drive on a pi 4 B

So why am I doing this well I was going to put together a retro flag GBI 2 but as raspberry pi modules are limited supply here in the UK/World Wide I decided as I had a pi4 B gathering dust I would review a different case that supports SSD drive.

I have been wanting to build something that I can let my son play with as he is a little young for the ps5 or the VR headset. I was looking at desktop cases and then found argon one v2 with USB SSD support.

A little bit of an update will be building a reviewing a GPI 2 in September as have managed to buy one in Germany and ship it to a hotel I will be staying in so I can get around being outside the European Union. 2022 issues I hate that we left not going to get political.

So what you will need to build this

Raspberry Pi 4 Modle B.
Small micro sd card.
1TB SSD drive.
Argon one v2.
USB adapter for SSD drive.
pihut argon one adapter for SSD 2.5 drive.
game controller Xbox pc controller I had kicking around

Burning the image:

Now for the fun bit, I tried this process with the 1TB image and the imager took around 8hrs it didn’t like it so instead I’m using etcher software to create the SSD image I have the drive in a quick swap 2.5 enclosure USB C so loaded the .img file into etcher and hit write

Bear in mind this is going to take a long time to burn at least 3hrs once it’s done we are ready to build the system.

Didn’t work again argh so after joining rick dangerous discord group and chatting with him and some of the great users I found 2 issues one I had a bad drive enclosure not compatible with raspberry pi. 2 the retro flag enclosure I had originally brought didn’t want to work so I sent it back and off the group recommendation I brought an argon one v2 and USB drive housing for it off pi Hut. that turned up surprisingly quick. Rick’s discord link below and his youtube channel.

https://discord.gg/H3FdEanPmv

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-DyMEeix9cKCilqOkT69ng

I also learnt from rick about the about-to-be-released version of his drive the [1tb]-Rick.Dangerous.Insanium.Edition.RPi4. Over 60 systems and 8,400 games on board and growing with user input.

A week later it launched and I downloaded it off Usenet 3hrs 30 with the new version I then imaged to a SSD drive from an old project that I had kicking around the workshop. it ready to use. more information can be found on the link below.

more information about the drive is below:

Rick Dangerous – Insanium Edition – Raspberry Pi 4 – 1tb Retro Gaming Image

The Physical Build:

this isn’t too complex you will need to put the heat sync tape on the 2 chips mentioned in the documentation. once they are done place the pi into the enclosure at this point you will need to plug the sideboard into the audio and HDMI ports and power then insert the pi into the gpio pins will post some stock images below. 7 screws and it built

Plugged in the power and turned it on wow Rick’s image is awesome some screenshots are below and it’s continuing to grow. this is on my 65″ 4kv and there are a lot of systems from my childhood. I will be having a retro night soon.

I will be doing a full review of the drive shortly once I get back from holiday and work commitments

ricks also going to develop a hand-held version for the GPI 2 I will be coming on the journey shortly with the discord team.

21/08/2022

why i have not posted recencely

sorry, not a lot has been going on have had a bit of a day job work overload going on and will be going on holiday for some RNR hoping for 9 days off when I get back more stuff coming up.

see you on the other side of the holidays.

21/06/202224/08/2022

Oculus 2 games I have been playing

As I have just returned from working in Greece these are games I have played since I perched the system.

if you want to get some money off please use my referral code

https://www.oculus.com/referrals/link/Maniacuk/

So this week will seem very busy but it’s not as it’s been over several weeks.

accounting +

let’s kick things off with accounting + a very rude but fun game this is definitely an 18+ game that’s very twisted have spent about an hour diving into this game and well it’s just plain strange it involves puzzle-solving and rude anecdotes from the different creatures you meet in the game. so what do I mean well I have helped summon the horned beast from hell and I have had to battle in court with a tiny lawyer. it’s one of the games that is very much for a cult following as it’s hard to categorise what it is. just expect a lot of f-bombs and another Rudeness defiantly one I will go back to.

Addictive puzzle solving with no plot just a lot of rude words and jokes jumping from area to area in a random way characters that you have met in other scenes will come back with a new seen one cursing you for getting them in trouble. there is zero chance of motion sickness with this game and can be played sitting down.

£8.99 on the quest store

 3/5

I expect you to die

I love puzzle games saw this when it first came out on the psvr just was having issues with space in my room so didn’t buy it but now I have the quest 2 so why not and seeing as I love puzzle games. This is a great game for sitting down and solving puzzles so I am 3 missions in and they are getting harder it involves you exploring the scene finding clues and then opening up parts and adding bits to machines very good for true puzzle-solving experience in vr.

It has a lot of moving parts to solve each mission. it’s my nightly game for winding down at the end of the day some parts are timed so you have to work quickly have only had to look at a walk-through for help once but defiantly worth checking out. only frustration is timing of some of the puzzles currently stuck just got to get the timing right oh wait i thougnht it was over but its not played another 2 mission i presumed it was over due to the data disk wrack was full just stuck on the last mission.

at £18.99 it’s a little more pricy but I do like these games I will be buying a second outing once I have completed this one.

 5/5

Population:one

a Fortnite-style game that involves climbing and building and shooting so what not to like about this multiplayer game. I have done the training and played a few matches against others seems fun I will be playing more over the next few weeks as love first-person shooters.

the only thing I hate so far is lots of kids chatting shit and in one multiplayer game, someone was trying to chat someone up. so a little off-putting but this is the joys of multiplayer without your friends. seems solid and they are regularly updating the system so I’m sure the kinks will be worked out.

Will give it some more gameplay and report back on it.

price wise it’s up near the top price bracket at £22.99

 2.5/5

A Fishermans tails

This is a great little puzzle solver animated adventure that threw me at first but soon got my head around it after tutorial loving it so far and I am only on the first hour of play no issues playing seated again easy-going game for someone who wants to unwind for the day.

lead for a great night’s sleep last night this reminds me of an old pc game black and white a god-type game. the key to this game is perspective as you are a wooden fisherman within a world within another world and loving it so far. The only annoyance is you need to complete each chapter otherwise it don’t save.

 3.5/5

1976 back to midway

this is based on the classic arcade game that i grew up with it comes with multiple control options from joystick to actual VR stick control loving it a bit more clunky than the original.

good for a short bit of fun one to fill some gaps from time to time not sure its worth the £10.99 price tag there is a demo for you to decide.

 1/5

Robo recall

This is one of the reason I is why I brought the system and it dose not disappoint fast base action with cheesy one liners great replaybility it’s a nightly pay for buy me have not finished the game yet but will update this post with more as I play

 5/5

Walkabout Mini Golf

Fun for the whole family nice easy to play mini-golf game mutable courses to play and lots of challenges not had the time to play as need to stand so only when the wife has gone out

 5/5

Pistol wiped

Just wow love it cool tracks so much fun to play hooked will give you a sweet on even when sitting will be.playing this some more I am sure this will just get more complex good physics and speed top play so far this evening.

 5/5

The Last Clockwinder

the clock master has vanished the clock tree needs maintenance and you are set logic puzzles to help save the tree you can use your army of robots who will mimic your movements to achieve these tasks.

you start off having to get access to your robots this was tricky as i did not know what was going on but soon figured it out then once

took me 5 mins to get my head around the physics after that loved it spent a good hour picking berries and delivering them to the machine. that was the first puzzle done.

one I will be keeping on my device.

 4/5

Vr sports

Was a little disappointed at first with one but once you have got the movement down it’s good fun but not one I would have rushed out and brought but hay it’s on there but have a feeling it will be removed for better games as I get them.

 2/5

Wings 1941

New game and what a fun little 8bit battler your hand controls the plane and trigger fires the machine gun’s left hand is your magnetic grab loot and health. i played through the first mission and loved every second of it a great on to play if you like the 1942 sort of games

this will be a regular play and a great new game for the oculus

 4/5

World Of Mechs

as someone who remembers playing mech warriors in submersive VR back in the early 2000s in the Trocadero in the west end. so to have this advanced version is great to me was having issues login in so will report back about online play soon.

 4/5

Down The rabbit hole

Alice in wonderland game with puzzles and interactive storyline have just added it to m list on my device and had a good 30 mins playing good graphics and so far great fun

 3.5/5

16/06/202216/06/2022

Oculus 2 Review + Mods

I finally bit the bullet and purchased a 256GB Oculus 2. I have previously owned the PSVR but had issues with space in the house so have shipped it down to my holiday home in wales so i felt the time was right to get back in to VR. why now well as someone who is going to start to travel again I wanted something fun to go with me on my journey.

well, let’s get started what’s in the box?

charging plug adapter
USB C cable
2 controllers
1 silicon cover
1 glasses adapter plate
head set

So I started by charging the headset as I always like to do to make sure I can test things out so let’s start with the set up you will need an app on your phone and a Facebook account and payment method you will then need to link the headset once done your ready to go so out with the first run app and got to learn movement and grabbing shooting etc. fun for five mins. over to the app store have chosen a few games I wanted to play and downloaded them with a slick interface and easy to use.

lots of games to choose from have selected a hand full of games I will be reviewing shortly.

Battery life is good at around 1 hr 40 mins approximately not the 2hrs that’s stated

functionality so far so good managing to play with a smaller playfield than I could with psvr with the latest firmware update there’s also hand physics in play to will be testing this out shortly as look cool.

loving the updates and more features on the way including streaming high graphics over the net it’s beta atm but looks promising. as yet to try pcvr link but will be covering this soon.

There has been a lot of flack about having to link it to facebook but this don’t bother me as people were complaining they were being baned on Facebook for breaching rules but that won’t affect me as not that rude on fb or chat rooms.

pros

constantly being updated games are being patched so always involves
a good selection of games at reasonable prices
big community on Facebook
great for 3d playback content.
play games for free in development by side-loading them.
good controls.

cons

I hate the standard strap too loose for me.
Battery life could be better.
Misting on lenses when playing physical games
Controllers straps

Games I primarily downloaded to play

Beat sabre
I expect you to die 1&2
Walkabout mini golf
robot recall
rec room
metaverse
big screen
+more

will be reviewing the over the next few weeks I will be adding them to my collection.

Accessory and improvements

Straps now there is an elite strap with extended battery connection I there are issues with these snapping so I did some research and decided to go with the bobo Vr m2 pro strap with the hot-swappable battery pack I managed to get this on offer for £39 its now £60 so look out for deals on amazon.

the strap can be found here.

Next up i wanted to get rid of fogging so again after strolling through the FB group bobo VR F2 fan came up and i brought this too and yes its worth the money no fogging is dropped in price since i brought it now £30.

Link available here

the final upgrade I went for was the kiki grip upgrade for the controllers with ring protection as seen some horror images of damaged controllers and I didn’t want to add to them. splashed out £39 on these but make them comfortable to wear.

The link can be found here

is it worth getting yes it is love it so far has been a blast playing some games yes it connects to the pc as well just don’t have a pc that’s powerful enough to test that out yet but I am sure I will be buying one soon enough

so games range from £40 to £4 for a game it can be played seated or standing up and has a great anti-collision system built-in that you can customise your space for play so you wont punch a wall tv etc.

So far not had any motion sickness but still have a lot of games to test out you can add side loading and pcvr if you have a supported graphics card.

lots of games in development with a side loader you can test some out before release and more experiences.

Yes, there is a way to play a lot of games for free using bootleg loader but I won’t go into this as I tend to pay for all the games I play. yes, it does work and google-fu will definitely give results.

there is a 2-hour refund policy if you don’t like the game you have paid for I am yet to test this out.

There’s a great Facebook group for chatting with other users. one word of warning if you are outspoken on Facebook and get banned a lot might want to use a secondary account for your device as banned in one banned in all.

lots of kids in multiplayer mode but more on this in another post.

anyhow let me know your reviews of games I should play.

30/05/2022

New Direction for the site

Don’t worry about me giving up just diversifying and adding my other passions to the site so will be reviewing games and hardware gadgets and more I will and adding more skills to my arsenal. I know I said this before but this time I am going to do it might even do some travel reviews as the world is opening up and I am itching to get out there.

So when is this going to happen well it’s already starting shortly your going to start seeing gaming reviews and hardware equipment. being added here.

Phase 2 will be domain name swap with the new site going live hoping by the end of summer. will be cleaning the blog up by giving them each area on the site I will also be running trying to run a daily blog and might even try some vlogging.

as always I am looking for sponsors and freebies to review as any help will be appreciated.

27/05/2022

How owning a 3d printer can change the way you solve problems

So as some on who loves to problem solve I thought I would share my first world problem and solution. So during the lockdown, we purchased a hands-free foaming soap dispenser this thing has had a mind of its own as light-sensitive so have moved it around the downstairs bathroom and now randomly dispenses soap on the floor so have decided to make a catcher so it will go in the sink.

So out with callipers and radius tool, this is a game-changer

now I have some radius and dimensions I have made a simple sketch infusion 360 that i will now take from 2d to 3d.

I then printed a small test form so I could make sure it fitted the operation as didn’t want to make a 17hr print to find it did not fit.

test print just to make sure all is well

ok so have adjusted from the wall to the front lip as 96mm fitted front but there is a 2mm deviation further you go to the corner. So now ready to print the 94 mm version just need to order some PETG in white that will be here tomorrow before I kick off the 17hr print might even film it for fun.

Time to print fingers crossed this will fit.

so will check back in the morning to see how it’s done as it’s only 54 mins in time to play some VR on my oculus quest 2 before I check in on it again. woke to spaghetti filament had jammed thankfully it stopped itself. So away we go again.

3hrs in will check back later

16hrs om there’s been some warpages on the base but should not matter 1hr 50mins left I’m going to bed report back in the morning.

Well, the results speak for themselves and works well I might add some foam tape to fix it in place as it does move when pushed.

on to the next project

11/04/2022

Time to get my cnc machine up and running again!!!

As my pc died over Christmas I have been putting this off for a while but now want to make some bits and the CNC will be perfect for this so I am going to get the machine working. and do some more modifications to it on the route. this is a 3040T Chinese milling machine.

I am also going to try CNC carving and milling with fusion360 as prior I have used other packages but seeing as fusion 360 is my go-to for design. as I learned on AutoCAD it shares a lot of similarities. more on this later.

The Story so far

This is so you don’t need to go back through the site. I brought this machine thinking CNC was easy as 3d printing and laser cutting it’s not. had the machine collecting dust for a year. during lockdown made an enclosure modified the machine to add some custom made end-stops and got rewired it and had a light bulb moment. then made a custom wast board with threaded inserts.

So as I wait on components from china for the cave monster time to clean out the enclosure and add make some bits to make my china CNC machine great and teach myself some more about CNC.

the spoil board is where I got to last time before the crash. and was working on a custom dust shoe. then other projects took over so I’m now going to start to make more stuff on my machine. So this I blog of my progress. see the photo montage below.

Time to clean my machine

As the machine has been sitting for a year since I last switched it on.

Before I get started getting a feeling I am going to need to clean the cooler water for the CNC machine, Ok not terrible but needed a cleand as organic material in the bucket. out with the old and time to clean the bucket fill it with some a 50/50 mix so 5L anti-freeze and 5L of deionised water as then bucket should keep it nice and clean going forward. now to pump it through the system see the pink in pipes and check for leaks, no leaks.

Now I have a clean machine I now to set it all back up. so over to the pc well remote link to the pc as it’s cold outside. so installed a remote desktop on the cave computer and have the machine running as the control box is on.

The Setup

Now to find my note as need to revisit them and get all the settings plummed back in.

Have installed mach3 need to install a plugin for the control board and MPG luckily have saved all this all in my dropbox so just drag and drop it all into my mach3 folder.

next up remembering pin set up so port 3 pin 1 = estop pin 2 = home switch pin 3 = limit switch and pin 4 = probe plate. so into inputs check there all right and enabled they are.

following the Chinglish guide, I go through the motor tuning and select all the right bits.

Config menu ports/pins

Next select input signals copy below

as i have added home and limit swtiches this is off wha the manual said now scroll down and enable estop and prob.

Now over to output signals tab.

Motor tuning for x y x follow below

now for A and splindle

now spindle

dont for get to hit save Axis settings after each change.

now one thing i forgot to set limits and homing that will mean your homing in revirse so on x and y dont forget to home Negtive only on x and y and your golden i have also set up the soft limits to prevent from crashing.

now to home the machine hmm it all z homes right x and y

adding edge finding and z zeroing tools scripts I highly recommend checking out

https://www.youtube.com/user/sunny5rising

The legend that is Charlie Sarsfield followed his instructions on adding limit and home switches and his tool zeroing and edge finding scripts and install them

and now to make sure the machine spins and does what it’s meant to all works fine will be adding a new calibration plate so will test the scripts work like a charm

So the machine is back to working but me being me time to modify it some more.

Upgrading dust extraction system

before I start running some projects I am going to revisit the dust extraction as it’s okay just not brilliant lots of leeks for dust. so I’m going to make this modular and dust-tight hopefully I have added some fins to my dust shoe so it should suck all the dust-up am also adding parts so that vacuum tubing that will go through a flang that I can plug my shop vacuum in and out of. so over to fusion 360 to model the flange.

now to test fit that before I make the inner flange. well it sorts of works i forgot to attach the inner tube so is floating so now making 2 outer tubes one so made them box the 35,2mm inner and then made so it will fit over the centre tube then enlarged it out to 36.5 mm with a 45mm outer

as for the tube end, I have made an inner opening end for 39.5mm and the flange end made it 35.2mm have then glued them to the flange. and screwed it to the enclosure. I forgot to take pictures doh here it is partly assembled with a vacuum hose attached from the vacuum end.

Have 3d printed a nozzle for the 40mm vacuum tube that I have a 5m length that i brought previously so I could extend the hose for the shop vacuum. I found a design some time ago and had test fitted it so I have cut down some vacuum hoses for the internals of the enclosure now going to print some clips to secure the hose internally to the roof of the enclosure.

all plummed in have ordered a new dust shoe from that has arrived fits well got to make adapter tube up infusion nothing flashy inlet side is 38.5mm and output of 36mm

2hrs later and it fits like a glove just need to trim down the hose lenth and install clamp

as now can plug the shop vac in and out. I might upgrade that too as is not too powerful think that will be next month’s shop if I feel it needs it.

Clamps

First up I needed clamping arms as I had a few issues with the tape method that everyone raves about. i might revisit this

so found some CNC clamps that I saw teaching tech use on a video so going to give them ago I will also test out some style ones as well as I need different ways of clamping down materials.

So new untested eSun PETG filament loaded into neon orange and away we go will check seems to be laying down fine layer 5 and only a little mess on the bed will check back later.

have now printed 3 diffrent styles will be testing them all out once I have the machine up and running. as we have some nice weather coming over the next few weeks willl get some diffrent materials as well.

I will be testing them all out I have a feeling the big one in the middle is too big for my hobby CNC machine.

have also designed my own one as well will do seprate post on that as this is already gone from being a quick post to entertaing me to another

Zeroing tool upgrade

Next up going to change my zeroing tool for a new one I have purchased off eBay.

as I was clever and used the power connector just need to unplug the old one and swap the wiring over now. All done and the magnet works well no hassle of crocodile clips well worth the £30

now back to the automated edge finder and tool z hight scrips now I know the XY thickness is 10mm and the z is thickness is 12mm so need to change the variables as shown below.

you will need to do this for all 4 scrips

time to test the system

test complete have moved the plate off material and hit go to zero not bad going it a little off I didn’t set the tool diameter so that might be the reason it’s away from the corner.

Setting up Chinese CNC with fusion 360

Now I could do this using a different method as having used other CNC design software in the past and still have access to it but me being me decided I would go another route as keen to learn more about fusion as it is more than just 3d modelling tool.

So time to put some scrap wood in and see how we go, going to start with something simple as I am going to use my go-to program for design to try the manufacturing side of the program that I have no experience with so going to make a pocket in some wood with a simple part to see how it works.

as with anything design related i need to take some measurements so i am going to start by measuring my scrap of pine in the machine, I make it 200mm x 200 mm x 12mm then made a note of this so when it gets to it the program will know how big the piece is. i am going to machine is.

Next, i will need to make a list of tools as all the sample tools are developed for big milling machines with quick-change collets one day when I have a big workshop I will get a bigger machine. but for the time being, mine is only 3040 well actually it’s less than that more like a 3727.

time to gather some data for tools so I have ordered a set of six tools from china and with that i have the following data. so going to add them to the system along with some end mills and facing tools that I have in my collection.

I have also found prior information on some other bits I ordered in the past so been collecting them in a file to add as well.

The tool adding can be found in utilities under tool management

Click library then click the plus icon you will be greeted with a tool selection screen

you will be greeted with a tool selection screen screen

so in this case will be adding a 6mm end mill so I select the end mill.

Time to give the tool some description vendor name as I don’t have a link or id won’t add them.

No to add cutter detail so I have this information on the tool

I have copied speeds from another package as the default 5000 speed on the tool was mega slow. so have now upped it to 16000 and have calculated a minim feed rate 17.882 meters per min now running it 650 feed rate as 18 was way slow for wood.

now hit ok as don’t have a holder template for the depth of tool 0 as I don’t think it’s necessary as will zero tool after each tool changes this is more for an auto-loading tool machine perspective.

tool set up complete

So infusion I have made this test part nothing special just make some pockets and will do more if it works this is a stage of learning so let’s see how it goes.

test part is not needed for anything just a quick sketch to see if it works

Now to switch from design to manufacturing add the tools then let’s see what they do.

Now for the set up this did seem a little daunting in the beginning think I have figured it all out I am going to only use one tool as this is experimental.

Click the setup button I am first going to move the origin from the centre to the front of the design is the same as the stock size it’s easy just click the dot on the front. as show below

now the stock tab I have changed the stock to be relative to the box with no offset.

The dimensions from earlier 200 x 200 x 12 and the stock match perfectly

Next to the program number and comment.

now we have this set up I am programming in a 6mm end mill so adding to the tool library.

so have programmed this six mm end mill in as the quickest one to add

first up going to perform this in 2 processes first am going to be pocketing the selected areas in the design then I will boar out the corner holes.

so to start going to the 2d pocket will then set the tool as my 6mm endmill. I will then select the 5 areas that I need to pocket out. click ok next under the 2d tool panel i selected the boar function with a 6mm tool selected each hole all 4 of them. selected ok.

I have run the simulation and it all looks like a good time to test it.

Time to post-process it then load it to the machine. and zero tools find the edges and we should be good to go.

The file generated not sure if mach3 accepts that but let’s have a look

Ok, the .tap isn’t recognised as a file in mach3 but I duplicated the file and changed the extension to .gcode will now load this into mach3 and see what it spits out.

loaded as you can see thinks the part is top left corner need to zero the tool to material height and find the edges using the zeroing tool and edge finder.

right zeroed the tool correctly and fount the edges got to love the auto edge and z finder. as you can see the image has been generated to fit the stock

right that’s worked will run the test programme and see what happens to wish me luck. Ok, that failed as it went in the wrong direction. I think the Origen is reversed going to change that in Fusion 360 then try again.

ok, I am a tit missed out on something from setting up in the homing limits in mach3 doh so I needed to tick 2 boxes. now homes correctly. as I am here also going to set up some soft limits so this all works right.

Away we go slow but steady think I need to mess with the speed and feed as it’s in and going down yay and the clamping just failed.

As I have caught covid again in bed writing this so have had some time to reflect on the failure of the first run. back into fusion 360

go tool management and time to set some parameters so Spindel speed upping to 16000 and 650 meters per min feed rate I have also added multiple depths so it will now not go down 18 mm and try cutting out so now have set it to 5mm per pass switched to 2D adptive clearing.

let’s try running this test program recalculated with new clamps fingers crossed, going to use the same blank as woods not cheap and being pine won’t kill me on the dust.

first, to zero all parameters so out with the new zero tools and find the edges going to jog the too over the zero probes I have a magnet connected to the tool then on mach3 hit tool zero. the probe will go down and touch the plate touch and retract then go to jog x side of the tool and go to offset screen and hit auto x will move to the x-axis side of the tool and retract repeat on Y size using auto Y same will happen tool will move to the tool and retract system all zeroed now to remove tool and magnet off a bit. hit zero and the tool will be sitting just above the bottom left front.

Now to start the program away we go.

working but feed rates way off so going to update .

so back in to fusion as my gcoding days are long time ago so i am letting the program do the legwork. as you can see scraps had some battle wonunds not to self dont go to zero all when tool is down in the wood hoping it will be machined over have stopped the job. time to restart it. as the rate it was running would have taken a long time machine. now upped feeds from 18 to 650 mm/min so will now run the final 4 pocket first one turned out well.

faster feed and we are finaly making dust

so have removed one pocket out of the design i think will run some other processes on this modle as i go but will attach the dust shoe as well as could feel dust in the air. but think i am going to leave that for another post as this has dragged on all week.

Now that I have figured out the basics I want to try running some projects carving from an STL file. making a 2d PCB and then using a bit to drill make the holes and engraving tools to make the tracks on single and double-sided copper PCB board, make some complex parts out of aluminium and more. these will be broken into different learning posts as don’t want to bog down this blog so will be another post as I learn more about both the software and machine.

Parts Incoming just had a bumper instalment of bits. so will be a post about this soon as want to make this a quick to set up stable.

01/04/2022

How to make quick jigs

In this case, I have 50 wooden yoyos I will be customizing. so I needed to make a jig for doing 4 at a time as I have 6months to complete this job for my boy’s birthday.

so first up I have my yoyo. so out with flang tool and callipers

in this case, I have used this to make a jig to hold 4 wooden yoyos so in this case, I used my callipers to measure the radius of the yoyo height and then used the fillet gauge to work out the curved radius on the edge of the yoyos 11mm then using

So over to light burn as this is where all the engraving magic going to happen drew a rectangle 120x120mm drew a circle 52.5m then using the array tool made 4 circles I grouped them then centred them in the rectangle. now to save this file will come back later to use it for the job. will export the file as a .dfx

Now to open fusion 360 to import the dfx into it. as I want things to match between the 2 files. now that I have my 2d sketch in fusion. time to extrude the base by 22mm I will then flip it and cut it to the base by 18mm with 4 pockets I then added the fillet tool using 11mm and ready to print.

ok now to slice it and print it.

now back over to light burn to finalise the jig. I have measured the inner dim of the yoyo to 41.32mm ruffly i am going to size the centre at 40mm across. so will draw a circle in the centre of each circle this is my outer engrave marker.

Now to make some trim lines as going to make a cutoff board with a cutout for the jig. as shown below will make a 120mm hole for jig and also cut the bard size down in size hopefully.

so the red line is the cut line the teal lines are frames so just show and don’t cut just marker.

after the initial cut, I will turn all red lines into frame lines

jig board is now made this will be placed on the laser bed at the beginning of running a job.

fixing is now printed I could of run this using my CNC machine to make it in a fraction of the time part but printed instead as my CNC machine needs to be set up as i had a drive crap out on me so lost all settings. that is for another time.

now to use it on my machine but first, a test fit wow like a glove. just got to finalise the design for my son’s birthday party.

will do some engraving next in the machine. all set up will do a test run soon and up date this post

test run done just simple engraving on one to see how it works before I run more.

well, this was a bit of fun for the 2-day quick project more to follow as love putting out these quick easy projects.