Project Frankenmill – Part 4, Balking Heads
New part for the build arrived today. 70 ohm, 300W braking resistor, for the VFD. Cheap from ebay. So cheap that one of the end caps was…
Project Frankenmill – Part 3, with a Heavy Head
One of my buddies that owns a pickup truck gave me a hand, and we picked up the spindle head at the local freight depot last night….
Project Frankenmill – Part 2, Approach
Mating the Head to the Z Slide Looking at the mounting of the Tormach head vs the X3 Z slide, it’s a bit eerie how close these…
Project Frankenmill – Part 1, The Idea
I’ve had my converted Sieg X3 for four years now. I used an off-the-shelf kit for the mechanicals of the initial conversion, sourced from the now-defunct ProMiCA…
Bike Light GoPro Mount Adapter
Here’s another quick and practical project that I knocked off in a couple evenings. My new POC mountain bike helmet has a non-standard venting arrangement, which makes…
Bicycle Disc Brake Caliper Mount
[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”11″ sortorder=”140,141,134,135,136,137,138,139″ display=”basic_slideshow”]It’s no secret that I can get pretty wrapped up in projects. Witness a “small” project that I took on for a friend,…
Epic Builds: Articulated Stereo Microscope Arm
[singlepic id=391 w=640 h=480] I’ve wanted a stereo microscope in my home lab for ages. In the last couple of years, it’s become an increasingly urgent need…
In-Depth CNC Conversion Electronics Overview
I converted my milling machine over to CNC back in late 2009. For most of the time since then, I’ve avoided the project of properly finishing up…
Mold Making & Resin Casting
My friend Matt shared a great link, called the Geurrilla guide to CNC machining, mold making and resin casting. I’m mostly up to speed on the CNC…
CNC Electronics Enclosure Work Commences…
Santa’s workshop was busy today. I finally got some motivation and time to continue work that I started a year ago, but really, has been a nagging…
HOWTO: Tormach TTS Conversion Kit Installation
Here is a quick how-to video I put together using some really old footage I shot in May of 2010. It shows how the Tormach Tooling System…
CNC Mill Telescoping Way Covers, Take 2
Quite some time ago (May 2011) I had managed to track down a telescoping way cover for a close relative (Sieg KX3) of my milling machine (Sieg…
More Custom Mountain Bike Parts
I finally got the CNC mill running well enough to actually run a couple of parts. My friend had trashed the skid plates that we made for…
Magnetic Rotary Encoder Eval
I got some samples of the nifty looking AS5040 10-bit magnetic rotary encoder IC from Austria Microsystems. I want to do some experiments with these chips to…
10lbs of Junk in a 5lb Box?
I’ve been slowly working to model the components that go into the CNC milling machine electronics package, and fitting them into an off-the-shelf rack mount enclosure. I…