Thursday 25 April 2013

My youngster having a go! budding jeweller!

I told him I would do the cad if he did all the preperation work of the wax and the finishing, coring etc..

they both picked a ring, Oldest picked LOTR the ONE RING and the younger picked the Green Lantern Ring. I drew both and today the oldest took his hand to it!



then the fun part!





















Monday 22 April 2013

Evelyn's Ring

A simple design, slim, elegant. with some nice pink diamonds in the sides.

Happen to have the work flow here so posting.


The Finished Setting: and the manufacturing
 The Cad: The Wax:

Saturday 20 April 2013

Making music with your Mill.

WARNING WARNING WARNING! 

Before reading further, you can and will seriously break your equipment if you do not know what you are doing. Continuing further requires :

1: Some degree of understanding of Python Code  (really just how to edit out changes)
2: A good degree of understanding soft limits and zeroing on your CNC
3: The ability to load and run code outside of your OEM structure (revo/roland/haas etc)

you will need

1: Download script at http://tim.cexx.org/?tag=midi2cnc
2: Download Python 2.7 at http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.7/
3: download midi files to play with. avoid files with "beats"

On my Minitech I had to edit out a line, #181, I simply deleted it from the script, and the script requires a few inputs to be changed before you run it. If it seems daunting , its not, think of it as  a really fancy batch file. I have outlined the basics in this video

(those who just wanna hear cool Midi music on a mill skip to next 4 videos.)




GodFather Theme

Star Wars Imperial March T

Tetris

Mario Brothers

Monday 1 April 2013

DeskProto JWX - Minitech wizard convert

Hey all, still a WIP but getting great results already :)

I had some time on my hands (easter weekend) and me mate Joe had an idea.. lets re-script the Deskproto JWX wizard to work for our Minitechs....

Firstly this is info on how that script works.. its a LONG video, so executive summary is

1: Take geometry, port to DeskProto
2: Run JWX wizard which automatically offsets for all fixtures
3: Wizard sets up and calculates AutoFlip + Rotary.

Really a fast way to do mundane pathing. Here is that video for original JWX. Great work Lex!




Those of us with Mach2/3 mills with decent Omron switches dont have to jump through all those hoops the Roland device has to.. we simply setup G54 after a physical tram and software "dial" so the basis of this wizard works VERY well for us!

The translation of the details was been mildly tedious because it requires quite a bit of coding, but its been relatively hassle free because Lex documents his wizards very well!

As it stands the wizard has been altered to work "normally" ie: no fixtures and no fixed X offsets for the rotary paths, X has been set to 0 so it will work with whatever fixture offset you have for your own arbour. (in my case Brants) and it works PERFECTLY, first test cuts done!

More info on upcoming fixture below :)

This is the wizard at 95% done, a few tweak left to get it looking neat, an exchange of graphics and some final tweaking of pathing values.

Changes:

1: Changed arbor geometry and cutouts to represent "Brants arbour"
2: Entire job but with one cutter, including hub hole
3: Roughing on flips changed from linear to radial (much faster)
4: Null code to operations 1:5 1:6 1:7 (using to cutoff supports, next change)
5: Removed all X offsets for rotary passes (see point 11)
6: Changed code to reflect that X offset as a variable for the before/after code throughout
7: Changed the chaining orders since we using one cutter right around
8: Changed rotary final method to skip total ambient
9: Reduced minumum width from 8 to 6mm for Brants arbour
10: Lots and lots and lots of tweaks like changing the hardcoded Roland mm/sec to mm/min
11: (in my video I use a g54, my X offset is not required but will re add)

The pathing section


and the cuts in order

Flip Cut

Rotary in process

and DOne!

So essentially that is a practical working carcass.. a few niceties like I said, some graphics etc..

Joe and myself are working on a strapon fixture similar to few already on the market and then refinishing this wizard to suit it, the fixture has a base plate thta fits to your table, this base gets shimmed and trammed to suit your machine then the fixture couples to it, and a OldHam coupling will fix it to your rotary to eliminate and runout..




Basically after that put it on, take it off, do what you like it will stay true..