This was originally posted as Shapeoko: Part 6, because I apparently can’t count.
A while ago I ordered a 300W ER-11 DC spindle kit from China to install in my Shapeoko. I finally got to the post office yesterday (stupid recipient-must-be-present shipping) to pick it up, am impressed with the whole process. Most of this post is about the spindle, there is some more belt tensioner tinkering down at the bottom.
I got some more time to work on my Shapeoko over the last few days, and now have mostly correct 3-axis motion. As before, details under the fold.
I’ve made a habit of these posts after SC every year, and took the pictures, so away we go.
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Naturally, this post is a follow-on to Shapeoko: Part 1 and Shapeoko: Part 2. I’ve basically put the machine together now, and can move the X and Z axis around from the host computer, but still have to figure out belt attachments for the Y axis, and run the wiring in a sane way. I was holding up a microswitch to the various relevant spots for end-stops as I went, and everything but detecting the upper extreme of the Z axis should be easy. As in the last two posts, there is an assembly gallery under the fold.
This continues from where I left off in my previous post Shapeoko: Part 1.
I alternated my Sunday afternoon/evening between tackling my grading backlog and building pieces of the Shapeoko. This pattern works well for tapping since they are both exceptionally tedious tasks, but in different ways. Gallery with captions below the fold:
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My Shapeoko kit arrived from Inventables while I was away at SC.
I’ve been trying to build myself a small CNC milling machine since 2009, and contemplating it for longer than that. It became clear that my original design, however educational, was a dead end sometime last year. I’d been idly watching the Shapeoko project for some time as it had similar aspirations to my design, and a couple months ago I was in a particularly mechanical mood when I saw that a batch had reached enough buyers to be produced, so I bought in for a mechanical kit to mount my existing electronics on.
The Shapeoko community is really excellent, and the kit was designed to be flexible, so I’m starting off with some suggested modifications – I’m using NEMA23 motors instead of the usual NEMA17 on the X and Y axis, because I already had some nice Lin Engineering 130 oz-in NEMA23 motors and the frame can fit them. I’m configuring for dual Y motors, which give more even force across the Y axis, and routing my belts on the outside of the frame, since I needed to buy different hardware for the NEMA23 motors anyway and this particular modification is widely recommended.
There is a gallery to document my first round of assembly below the fold (captions don’t display properly in the RSS feed).
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I recently decided I wanted a “reasonably nice flashlight”, and discovered that “nice flashlights” are objects of serious obsession. Originally I was planning to just throw something attractive in to an Amazon or DealExtreme order, but then I started reading reviews from EDCForums and CandlePower, and… uh… this happened. The important thing I leaned is a lot of lights have ridiculous tacticool features, like dazzler or SOS blink modes, or design features to improve their use as a Kubotan and damage whatever touches them in a pocket or bag, and set out to avoid such things.
Eventually I found my way to BudgetLightForum where interested people who do not think it is reasonable to drop hundreds of dollars on flashlights reside, and based on feedback there, decided to try the combo deal ThruNite had running to get a AA T10 and a AAA Ti for $30 for the pair.
They showed up today (in nice packaging) and are rather interesting, so pictures and text below.
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As a fun aside to the previous post, there is a story my parents like to tell from my childhood, which generalizes the kind of permissive learning objects learning computers are an instance of. When I was very little, I … Continue reading
I finally got my Raspberry Pi yesterday, and wanted to ramble about it for a bit under the fold.
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We’ve been doing some parts closet cleaning along with the sysadmin types in our building on campus, and I spotted an original AT&T branded WaveLAN PCMICA card (Model 3399-K2624) in one of the bins. These are the precursor to all modern wireless networking devices – they don’t just predate the 802.11 standards, but were actually the contributed technology that eventually became the basis for the standard – I love computer history artifacts, so I had to play with it.
Sadly, the wavelan and wavelan_cs Linux drivers were demoted to staging in 2.6.33 in 2009 (commit) and removed in 2.6.35 in 2010 (commit… gods I love well documented F/OSS projects).
This is eminently reasonable, since it is non-standard in every way, and I may be handling one of the only remaining functional examples – assuming it is fully functional. I tried to verify with some LiveCDs of suitable vintage, but inserting the card either errored the module on load or crashed the machine… which is probably why it was removed from the kernel. It’s still a neat artifact and will be getting tucked away with my odd vintage machines.
While I had it out I opened it up (Imagine! Opening a consumer device without having to pry the fucker apart with spudgers while praying to whatever gods you believe in that none of the tabs break.) The picture above is the “EAM” (External Antenna Module) pulled apart. There isn’t too much to see among the RF cages, but the fact it is assembled with the wire harness apparently hand soldered into a row of machine pins is amazingly quaint, and the fulls-scale R/F parts are awesome.
I’m pretty enamored of the industrial design on this thing – it looks like an important transitional device. It is the dull gray that was common on (especially AT&T) computer equipment in the 80s, which has grown even uglier with UV yellowing, so the color, logos, and sharp edges look like it crawled out of the 70s, while the rounded accents, domed round indicator LEDs, and darker molded stress relief look surprisingly modern.
