There are times when I envy the guys whose leave work at the door, whose hobbies and interests basically consist of going to a bar drinking beer and watching sports… It’s just not me… well… I do enjoy a good beer every now and then. Ok… I did at one point like American Football but after the 85 Chicago Bears,….. really……. what’s the point. Well…. Ok… when I was a young buck… I did do the bar scene… but… that’s beside the point.
Anyway, I’ve got so many frikin interests it’s hard to get any of them done.. But… in a weird sort of way, it almost seems all the hobbies and interests may be approaching convergence… Go figure…
Freecad is cool… My polylineArc code submission had the living snot refactored out of it but there are a bunch of things that we need to do there. I hope I can find the time to finish the polylineArc contribution. There are a bunch of things that I want to get done there. I’m really looking forward actually learning how to use the software and applying it as a design to for some of my upcoming projects.
Then there is my interest in Linuxcnc, building a reprap from a decommissioned radial arm saw, my bees, finishing the rebuild on my Sherline cnc mill, getting my Rockwell Delta Toolmaker surface grinder running, Metal Shaper CNC conversion, as well as a bunch of recent hardware acquisitions that have occurred in a way that the fates are smiling on me at the moment I think.
New toys….. err… tools in the works:
I went to Village presses CNC workshop and attended the casting workshop and the opportunity came about to buy an aluminum casting furnace for a price I couldn’t refuse. I also managed got some rough cast aluminum adapters for mounting my steppers to my Sherline. That’s really got the gears whirling in the my head.
While at the workshop I won a Texas Microcircuits MP2CP Pendant kit. That just game in the mail today and that thing is looking amazing… The board looks of very high quality construction and it came with this really cool joystick. I actually have a pendant case that I think I can mount that in.. Originally, I was going to make a pendant control out of a Logitech game controller, but forget that(for now at least)..
Documentation is at: http://randyray.com/texmicro/
examples at: http://randyray.com/texmicro/
Lets see.. Oh yeah… Then there was this deal… That was just way to good to pass up..
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/qu-bd/open-source-universal-3d-printer-extruder-dual-ext
Oh.. then there was the 20 buck gift certificate that I got for inventables.. I wound up getting a maker slide for my radial arm saw rep rap and spending a lot more than 20 bucks… ;(
Product: MakerSlide – 25142-01
http://www.inventables.com/
Description: Length: 1200mm, Lead Time: 45 days
Unit price: $24.65
Quantity: 1
Total: $24.65
This reprap 3d printer thing is great, but one of the things that’s troubling is the plastic that it extrudes… It’s not exactly cheap material and it’s not exactly what I’m thinking is ecologically the most friendly thing out there. I’m thinking that sooner or later 90 percent (a number pulled out of my butt) of what a reprap extrudes is going windup in a landfill, or swirling around the ocean. So the brain is connecting all the dots here. My personal 60K work force (my bees) might be(no pun at first, but its late and its striking me as funny ) might be able to help me with their beeswax..
The thought occurs to me that some folks out there in the developing world would be far better off with with a 3d printer that could 3d print out an investment pattern using beeswax than plastic. Getting ABS plastic material is not easy if your poor and in the third world… Building a smelting furnace for aluminum of cast iron… is real doable. Think about it…. The material to make the pattern beeswax, can be gotten from the environment.. Aluminum, is basically everywhere… (The furnace I have won’t work with cans or chips… Needs chunks) So… I’m thinking if I can fun doing my thing and my research and experiments winds up helping someone 3rd world farmer be able to print out beeswax investment pattern for his aluminum water-pump… that would be totally cool. Compared to hardship that’s faced by so many people out there, life has really been good to me and I feel that I need to do something to give back to maintain a balance. Its been actually sortof freaky lately. I trend on the agnostic side of things, but the way things have been happening to me lately (they’re not bad) I’m you wonder if there’s not some higher power out there pulling some strings. Anyway..I’ve made it a point to keep religion and politics out of my blog and that’s about as close as I’m going to go with that.
All this is well and good but I really do need to get something finished. I’m interested in really understanding LinuxCNC and I’m thinking to do that, It would be good to finish my Sherline Mill retrofit to get some usage and then use LinuxCNC on my Radial Arm Saw Reprap project as opposed to the traditional everything controlled by an Arduino… I love Ardiuno its, just that my interest in LinuxCnc is far stronger at the moment.
It’s going to be a few weeks till the toys start rolling in for the radial Arm Reprap Project… So I’m thinking that I should finish up, the polylineArc, and the Sherline Mill Retrofit as well as the honey do projects.. clean the garage(which I need to get done, because I extract my honey in there) and a host of other home projects that need to get done.
Probably the next post is going to be on my lead screw woes and saddle issues on my Sherline mill. Yikes what happened to the time…. Need to get to bed before the sun comes up.