Added some LED's under the spindle

Yesterday when tidying up my 'hobby-room' i found some led strips and placed 4 of them on a small plate to put under my spindle.

I also had an Ikea 'Dioder' power supply lying around so i could connect them directly to the main power outlet.

Now i don't have to use a seperate desktop lamp that's always in the way of the moving axes :)

New table with workpiece clamps

yesterday i decided to make a new table with rails for workpiece clamps.
this morning i routed some parts in pvc, made the table and installed it.

as you can see it also had the option to adjust the height to perfectly make it level.

some minor tweeks...

today i've made some minor tweeks on my ccn machine.

i replaced the existing 'stiff' motor coupling with a flexible tube with clamps.
this method is used alot i've seen but i found it looking pretty cheap.
but i must agree that although it looks cheap and simple, it works better than my stiff, homemade, coupling.
with the stiff coupling the machine 'twitched' a little and now with the flexible coupling it rns verry smooth.

i also added a piece of plexi i had lying around at the back of the machine to hold back the debris from the routing process.
-> i did have to reposition the home switch...

redesigning the x-axis

the x-axis had a slight deviation so i had to redesign this.

because i had a limit budget i used hollow-tubes wich slightly sack in the middle when pulled down by the weight of the router-head (2-3mm).
this way you get a slightly bended line when routing.

with redesigning i also had to do this with materials i already had because my budget for the machine was as good as fully spent.
i did buy a new rail profile in the hardware store but this only cost me 4€.
the rest is done with spare materials i already had.

first tests with foam cutting addon

making some (abstract) foam cars to put on my architectural scale models.

adjusting the width:

schaal 1:100: piepschuim:


Schaal 1:200: fijn schuim:

update on hot-wire cutter: added a wire feeder

today i've added a wire feeder to my hot-wire cutter for when the wire should snap. this way is used in many foam cutters and pretty simple to make.

also in the drawing you can see on the right that with the 2 front screws it is easy to adjust the wire. by turning the screw in a sertain direction the wire will move left or right and get the wire in a 90° angle.

made a hot-wire cutter option for automated foam cutting

being an architecture student making models has become routine.
so now having a cnc machine i thought it would be nice to equipt this with a foam cutter option.
the simplest way i could think about was making a custom U-shaped hot-wire cutter to mount on the z-axis.

a few weeks ago i also got a 2nd hand regulated power supply of 24V/3A from my girlfriends father so the most expensive part i already had. i now only had to make the U-shaped cutter with some scrap parts.

Got a "real" Dremel now, so made a new router mount.

Because my nephew got a newer model i got his old Dremel router.
Now i can finally get rid of my cheap knock-off one that had almost no torque and was twice as loud.

So i've made a new custom router mount with a little dust cap (made with some scrap materials i had)












And this is the setup i now have with the controller under the router and both on a movable drawer with wheels so i can easily roll all of it to my computer when in use.

Testing new pen holder.

Just made a simple pen holder to test drawing (or writing) with the machine. it looks good at first sight but i think i still need to install some anti-backlash nuts on the ballscrews for a smoother movement of the axes.

Front and back cover of controller ready

so this saturday i've made the front and back cover of my CNC Controller.

I also tried to "write" some text on it but used the wrong pen (water based instead of alcohol based) so i had to overwrite the party whiped out text by hand. therefore it doesn't look as clean as it should... but then again a good lesson learned :)

i also have to get me a second fan as you wil see one missing.