[Coco] [coco] Coco CNC

[George Ramsower]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gene Heskett"

> On Friday 15 February 2008, George Ramsower wrote:
>>Okay. It finished and it's not perfect. There is a stair step and it has 
>>to
>>be the dremmel. I know my parts are perpendicular and parrallel. Now I'll
>>re-face the part in the other direction and see what I get.
>> The grid continues...
>
> I probably need to reface my table too, its managed to collect a dig or 3 
> from
> errant end mills.  But first take up all the slack in the jibs, else it 
> will
> sag from its weight on the far end, and cut the end under the bit a thou 
> or
> so too much.

 The stairstep wasn't the dremmel... dammit! I was MY bad. I missed by about 
.023 on the Y slide and it was not aligned perpendicular to the table. Also, 
the Z slide was off a tad also. I got that done today, faced that throw away 
part again and it is beautiful. Now I can face the working table and get it 
flat.
 The working table was saw cut from a much larger piece that was extruded. 
So it was not perfect. However, I used this imperfection to enable the 
clamping of the X axis nut. Had to really tighten the mounting screws to the 
X slide to pull it down almost flat. It was slightly curved. All this turned 
out really well as now I have a very solid working table to work from.
 Tonight, I will begin the surfacing of that table to ensure it's flat.
>
> I put some more links to pix up on my web page.  Gotta make up some
> explanatory text one of these days to wrap around the pix.  Its not 
> running
> yet, waiting on a couple of bags of enclosed connectors, I'm going to 
> switch
> the whole lashup away from those molex's before I get a piece of swarf in
> them and short out the driver board.  Tain't purty, or cheap, did that
> once. :(

 You call it swarf. We call it chips. I suppose if it's wood, it's swarf. I 
have never gotten "swarf " in my foot. Chips penetrate quite well and are 
difficult to get out.

>
> The Ampmeter says its 15 volt, but it is actually 1.5 amps full scale, and 
> is
> currently clipped into the ac fuse circuit so I can see how hard the 
> spindle
> is working.  It gets wired in solid, and solidly mounted beside the 
> spindle
> motor one of these days (or nights as the case may be)

 I've used voltmeters to measure amps, with the appropriate shunt. All we 
have to do is KNOW it's amps and not volts.
 I've also used an oscilloscope as an ammeter. All that's needed is a shunt 
resistor.
>
> I wish that $500 (6 years ago) Olympus camera of mine had a viewfinder 
> that
> corresponded to the image it takes, neither the zoom nor the field of view
> follow the zoom of the lens at all well.  Zoomed all the way in it appears 
> I
> get less than what I see in the finder, whereas zoomed all the way out, I 
> get
> more than I see, a lot more.  The moral is to shoot wide, and crop with 
> the
> Gimp I guess, it already did wonders for the gamma, or the dark stuff 
> would
> be almost invisible in these shots.  It has a live color lcd viewfinder 
> too,
> but if I turn it on full time, battery life is 10 minutes max.

 Parallax is a bitch. This is one reason I love my view camera. Never a 
doubt with what you see in the ground glass behind the lens. My digital 
camera has automatic parallax compensation up to about six feet and it zooms 
with the zoom button. After that, I use the LCD on the back of the camera.
 If I could afford one, I would love to have a good digital SLR camera. But 
I'm not going to buy another digital until they have about twenty or more 
megapixels. I already have a five meg. It's okay. But to double the print 
size, you need to quadruple the pixels. So There's no point to get one 
that's only a little bigger, until it four times bigger.
 I would love to have a "Scan Back" for my view camera, but at $12,000 ... 
it isn't within my wildest dreams. It's the only digital that can equal my 
view camera with regular silver halide film. They are approaching the 
quality of 35mm now with the 11 meg stuff... not ain't quite there, yet.

>
> Figuratively speaking, I think George is actually making progress faster 
> than
> I am.  He already knows the basics of the machinery, something I'm 
> learning
> as I go.

 Yeah, basics is about it. Only eight months in a real machine shop doesn't 
really count for much, but it was a learning experience. However, I've been 
turning stuff on lathes for many years and learning my manual milling 
machine for about ten years. I couldn't tell you how many parts I've tossed 
because I didn't do it correctly.

 You are learning tooling, setup, fixturing and programming all at the same 
time. That's a lot to do. All I have to do is learn tooling, setup, 
fixturing, and programming on my Coco CNC machine.

 DOH! It's the same!  And I still haven't made a part, yet. You have! So 
maybe you are ahead of me!

 HEH!