Yeah, heard about that. I'll try some models in different resolutions to get an idea about the speed of digitizing with a probe. I don't expect to use it on a daily base. More for incidental cases in which someone wants to have something copied. Thanks anyway for the reply, Tweakie!

 

@GrayUK, I will!

 

Tried some engraving on hard board, as test before doing the real thing. Wow, that took about 10 hours in 2 sessions. Have to try to shorten that, must have done something stupid with making the gcode. Anyway, a little video of Vectric doing the virtual cutting.

 

No. The procedure is JPG -->AI --> Vector --> Aspire. I used a 60 degree V-bit to engrave these drawings. I think I should have used V-carving instead. But in the virtual testing I was not happy with the depth of cutting of the V-carve, so tried to use the engraving for a more controlled depth. Just have to play around with the V-carving to get it exactly right, I guess.

The good thing of this exercise was, that I now found a very quick and relatively easy way to convert any picture into vectors. It opens up an infinite source for creative work!

The other good thing was to see the Buffalo work for 7 hours in the first session without missing a beat. The second session the same. That gives a lot more confidence in the machine and makes my hands itch to do more and more, and more, and more and ….even much more!

 

And as you could see on the other thread, it bit me!

 

So replaced today all 4 stepper drivers, calibrated everything again and even managed to finish of the job that I had to stop because of the driver problems. The new ones work very good and seem to be less vulnerable for power surges or other EMP or EMS (whatever it is called). Cutting again as precise as possible with the OX, within 0.05mm. Not bad.

I was making a female mold out of MDF to pour some concrete ring parts for around trees. When all is waterproofed and the parts are ready, pictures will follow!

 

Received the touch probe yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, no time the next days to hook it up and do some testing. It doubles as a Z offset/tool offset probe. So can take away some cabling, less chance of interference.

 

I used ABS for them. For the dust collection (the flashy blue colors) I used PLA.

 

So, I was busy with this little project to make a female mold out of MDF for a tree ring. Huh? A tree ring? Yes, a ring you put around a tree to make it look nicer in your garden. Easier to mow the grass around it and cleaner when throwing some mulch around the roots. Build the mold out of 6 layers of 15mm MDF and a last layer which had a nice lotus flower engraved in it. Next steps was smoothing the contact surfaces with some filler, wax the whole thing with beeswax and finally smear some vegetable oil all over as a kind of release agent. Then we poured the concrete in, tapped the sides to remove air and covered the top with some polystyrene to keep heat and moisture in while curing. And then….. an all to eager impatience got a grip on me and I just had to try to get the only partially cured piece out of the mold. That didn't go that easy, so I first took the plate with the lotus flower off, just to see that some of the concrete was holding on to the mold quiet persistent. But nothing to be worried about, yet. Removing the piece out of the rest of the mold proved to be a bit more difficult, so I decided to use the bandsaw to open up the mold from the side to create room for the piece to get out. Long story short, during the whole operation I adjusted my expectation of the final result downwards while I was going on, only to see the piece breaking in two and chipping of here and there, leaving it quiet useless. If I only could have waited till tomorrow morning………

So, tomorrow morning when daylight has arrived again, I'll make some pictures of the end result to make the embarrassment nice and complete by posting them here. Please punish me with ruthless critics. don't get rude though.

I'm now going for a male model and some RTV silicone to make a proper mold (which I should have done to start with) and start production of our nice tree rings. Grrrrrrr…..

 

Yes, you laugh! You, you, you …………..mmmmbbllblbl

 

The pictures…

 

Yeah I did. This mixture was just portland and sand, not so strange it broke. The final ones we're going to use a mix of portland, sand and small size pebbles. That should do the job. If not than I will start using FRC (fibre Reinforced Concrete). The parts are small, so I think rebar will not be necessary. But…..we'll see how it finally turns out. First have to get the RTV silicon for the mold.

 

Getting material for making molds here in Thailand is (not surprisingly!) again a ………. ah well. So time for plan B. Making a vacuum thermoforming machine to use polystyrene and/or ABS sheets for molding. Since our oven was having some problems it was a good time to replace it and use the heating elements for the vacuum machine. So now busy with making the thing out of MDF, cutting parts on the CNC and assemble it. If successful, I'll post the pictures. If not, I crawl away in shame.

Unfortunately, I had no time yet to test the probe. The vacuum thing has priority at the moment to start making some stuff for our garden. But, don't worry, it will happen soon enough (maybe if the MDF dust gets too much on my nerves I'll do it in between this job).

A rough design in SK


If it works out as expected, I'll will design something that makes use of OB stuff and profiles.

 

So, got the probe installed and it works. Have some problems with the software, i.e. it stops at some point in the probing process and retracts to its upper limit. But that will work out somehow. No video, it's not very interesting to see the probing at a speed of 30mm/min. Also I have to look if the probing can done a bit faster than that.

 

The vacuum table is ready, but I made it too big! at least for the imminent projects I had in mind. So the pulls gave a lot of wrinkles, undesirable. I quickly put together a smaller table and have to make a reduction bulkhead in the oven to heat the smaller frame. A first test pull on this smaller frame worked very well! Although not yet perfect. Shouldn't take long now before I can make a serious short video about it and show the results here.

 

Well, the serious short video didn't stood a chance. Hands full with the forming and the cam with stand are still packed away somewhere. Can't be bothered to try and find them at the moment. What I did find though, is that the CNC router and a vacuum former together are a very powerful duo!

So, I decided to take it more serious (well….) now and designed a better setup that allows for more professional results and higher production speed. The new design is more or less based upon the Stelter (check Youtube for that), although I liked the Formech design more because the heated material doesn't have to be moved, hence less loss of temperature while forming. The Formech are using quartz heaters and I couldn't find the right lamps that provide enough heating area for the application. The ones I found have only 480mm heating area on a length of 600mm, which I considered to be not practical (you need an oven 20% larger to have a full cover of the material).

The next few weeks will be dedicated to collecting materials and build the new design. The ceramic heater elements are ordered from China (and are sold in the West for crazy high prices!), still looking for a decent priced vacuum pump (5-6 CFM) but are going to try to use a 3HP compressor in reversed mode to start with. I'm using a 31KG used propane gas tank as a vacuum buffer (smelly and will take some time before all gas is extracted from the inside steel).

It's a fun project and if it works out the way I hope it will, a very productive tool with lots of possibilities.

The previous made vacuum table I will re-use as a sanding table and a vacuum press for veneer and wood forming work. So nothing lost there.

The designs of both models lined up. Valves, hoses, tanks, pumps etc. will be filled in on the fly.


Wish me luck and steady hands!

 

The new vacuum former is nearly ready, just have to get the ceramic elements in. For that I needed to make square holes in the 1mm stainless steel oven plate. Not having a cnc plasma cutter yet, I had to come up with some cunning plan (Baldrick of Blackadder). So, I used the Buffalo cnc to make a mold for all the holes and going to use my hand plasma cutter to do the cutting. Had a dry run on 1mm mild steel and it seems to work pretty good.



So, for now I can do without a CNC Plasma Cutter. This also brings al kinds of new ideas along, like cutting some nice template for an arty steel plate job that can be used for the new gate we're planning.

 

Well, have this project in my mind for a garden gate out of stainless steel 304. As you can see, the image in the middle circle needs to be engraved into the 2mm 304 stainless steel plate. I'm planning to use the Buffalo for this, with the Makita on minimum (10K RPM) low feed speed and an Onsrud engraving bit with 0.5mm tip and 15 degrees angle. The idea is to make passes of 0.1mm each until the final depth of 0.5mm is reached.

Anybody with advice or "OH NO! Don't do that's" please feel free to help me out here.

Thanks in advance.

 

Well, a CNC plasma would have been much easier…….. but for a first attempt it turned out not too bad.

 

Hi Martin,

That is certainly the plan, a CNC plasma cutter. I'm boiling it at the moment, thinking to use my Buffalo for it and in its place build a new CNC router based upon the experiences with the Buffalo and try to make the next one stronger, faster and a little bit bigger.

My present project is a vacuum former, though. It's nearly ready and as soon I have it running and know how to get proper results with it, I'll post a video here. Might be a nice one for another build, perhaps.