Experimental Flocking Box 1

Up until now I have been using self adhesive crushed velvet paper for soft linings on pen boxes. This has been OK, but I spotted someone using some flocking on a YouTube video. It looked interesting so I decided to do a test.

I made up a 'box' which had two flocked surfaces on the inside.

The surfaces are glued then flock fibres are 'puffed' onto it with a puffer bottle. It works well, but does give a different, harder surface that the crushed velvet.

The real advantage is when you come to coat one of the pen slots that I mill into the boxes to hold pens. This is really fiddly to cover with paper. With the flocking it is easier, but you still have to be careful to apply glue in all directions and then ensure the flocking is uniformly applied to avoid gaps. As the glue is the same colour as the flocking it's not a total disaster if the flocking has a small gap here and there.

This is a trial pen slot that has been flocked to see how well it works. Apart from a small gap it worked well. There's maybe not as much cushioning to protect a pen as the self adhesive paper, but it's definitely better than just a wooden slot.

Progress on Chairs

There's been some movement on the chair project. I have used the CNC3020 to make joints, which makes a very neat joint and parts that are more or less interchangeable. 

Both mortices and tenons are done with custom gcode programs. I have finished all the parts for the first (trial) chair and have glued it up.

The chair is pretty solid so far, the seat needs fixing now and some covering with fabric. Some foam is also needed as these won't be wooden seats, the thickness of the foam needs to be determined.

The seat blocks were originally going to be wooden, but with the 4 degree sides and three screw holes, I have decided to 3d print them.

They really are much neater and are very strong. Also, I get to do something else while they are being printed (I can probably print a chair set at a time if it'll fit on the print bed) and I can have almost any colour I want.

More Tenons on the CNC3020

I've done some more joints on the CNC machine. Here's one at a fairly accurate 4 degrees:

This is for the seat of the chair. It's a pretty accurate 4 degrees, set up using wedges that I 3D printed at various angles. This is the joint being machined. It's a fairly simple tool path but fairly efficient. It takes about 25 minutes for a tenon (mortices are quicker), but that time isn't dead time, I can do something else while the machine is working.

And the final result (these are test pieces):

Spindle Camera Mount

I made a quick little bracket for mounting the spdinle camera on the CNC milling machine while it is operating. I can then see what's happening without having to look at the spindle directly.

The shiny red bit is a mount off a cheap magnetic base from ebay. It works well, I may get some more. Unfortunately the base isn't very strong.

Here's a picture of some PCB milling going on:

here's a video of the same.

Pen and Pencil Set

This pen and pencil set is something that I've done before. The pencil is one of the drop lead workshop pencil kits and the pen is a standard ballpoint kit.

This time though, I used the CNC to mill the hinge recesses and the pen recesses. This was always the tricky part of making a pen box, but the CNC makes it much easier and leaves a much better finish. As the wood is pine it's difficult to get a good finish to the recesses, but the CNC leaves a good enough finish that it could be left bare, after some sanding.

The outside of the box was stained.

The hinges and catch aren't as nice as I'd like. I think I may try coming up with my own hinges and catches, maybe milled from brass or aluminium.

More PCB Milling

I'm experimenting with milling more detailed and double sided PCBs. So far I have tried a smaller cutter (D bit) that was 0.1mm, but I suspect turned out to be a bit larger than that. The fine tracks have disappeared in a few places so it's not usable, but overall it's encouraging.

The four large holes are my attempt at registration pin holes, which failed as the PCB software auto centres the artwork so when I milled the traces they weren't registered with the pin holes properly. I need to experiment with methods of creating these holes.

The second attempt at the double sided OLED watch PCB was more successful. I mistakenly drilled the via holes from the wrong side, I hadn't remembered that the holes are drilled from the bottom of the board, so I milled the top side tracks then drilled holes. Of course they were wrong and this PCB has an extra set of via holes. It is probably just about usable, but I am going to make a new board more suited to milling and also add some of the circuit changes as well.

This second PCB looks a lot better. I cleaned the copper up using some fine wet and dry paper as there's a lot of rough burrs as it comes off the milling machine.
The blue PCB is the one I had made in China, for comparison.

The registration using pins worked well, the program I wrote to generate the pin holes now uses the board outline, which has to be the correct size.

Collet Holder

This is the sort of thing that the CNC router is great for. I wanted a simple way to hold the collets that came with the CNC spindle, there's 13 of them and it's easier to use them if they are stored in order. So I made this holder:

Each collet is in a hole that is made up from four holes of different radii and depths so the collet is held snugly.

Making this without a CNC machine would be a trial indeed and simply not worth it. With a CNC it's trivial, well almost.

3040 CNC Demo

The Chilipeppr software that you can use to drive the TinyG controller comes with a demo file. Once I'd calibrated the CNC so it moved 1mm for every 1mm it was told to (instead of 4mm for every 1mm it was told to), I had a go at carving the demo. Before the recalibration I had terrible problems getting the machine to do my bidding. I don't know why I didn't realise that I needed to calibrate it, it seems silly now that I didn't. Why I thought the two bits of kit (TinyG and the router) would have worked together out of the box(es) I don't know. Anyway, here's a video of the machine carving part of the demo logo:

I've just used some masking tape to hold the workpiece down, it's fine for a quick test.