Project Frankenmill – Part 6, The Rethink
After some thinking, it may make more sense to modify the Tormach casting rather than the Z slide on the X3. I took some measurements and did…
Project Frankenmill – Part 5, Turn Turn Turn
My VFD showed up today, so I got it up and running with the Tormach motor. No real mystery to wiring up the basics: 120VAC single phase…
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,…
Camera Slider Track
I have long wanted to work on some motion-controlled camera rigs, for time lapse and moving video shot purposes. The longest-brewing idea I have had is for…
AZIZ! Light!
In an earlier post back at the beginning of this month, I described the beginnings of my DIY microscope illuminator project, dubbed Project AZIZ. At that point…
More Microscope Hacking: Camera Output!
[singlepic id=405 w=600] Apparently hacking around with my microscope has turned into something of an obsession. The other day, I wondered if I could easily add a…
Powder Coating Experiments: Round 2 (Video)
Now that I have had a couple of weeks to get my powder coating process tuned up, I decided it would be good to put together a…
Diansu DS-982 Solder Paste Dispenser
I did a review, mini-teardown, and test of an imported pneumatic solder paste dispenser that I picked up on eBay. [youtube 9RdAL-ysBhA]
Project Aziz
My recent acquisition of a stereo microscope for the electronics lab has brought about a couple of side-projects. One of them is the custom boom stand that…
Powder Coating Experiments: Round 1
I was intrigued by the idea of powder coating the parts of the microscope arm project, as well as other items. So, I decided to do a little…