Moving the milling machine

We took the table of the manual milling machine, because we kept bumping our hips on the handles when trying to squeeze past it. This gave us more space, so I thought: let's move it completely; we never use it. We spent 4 or 5 hours on Friday moving it the 4 metres to sit by the doors. We used the crowbar to lift it onto steel bar to roll it along the floor. Next job will be to try to sell it on ebay.

I lost my previous home-made phone cover last week sometime. When I checked my phone this morning, it turns out that I had accidentally phoned someone last night while my phone was in my pocket. It was the chinese take-away that I phoned, so it could have been worse. This morning I designed and made a better cover for my phone, using HeeksCAD software and my 3D printer.

LinuxCNC is working nicely

I'm using HeeksCNC to calculate the toolpath and LinuxCNC to drive the Bridgeport Series 1.

With some help from John.

We unplugged my "Heeksatrol" computer from the Bridgeport Series 1 and replaced it with a PC running LinuxCNC. In less than a day we had it moving the 3 axes, with very little work by us.
We copied some code to make LinuxCNC ask us to press a button to continue on a tool change:

 loadusr -W hal_manualtoolchange
 net tool-change iocontrol.0.tool-change => hal_manualtoolchange.change
 net tool-changed iocontrol.0.tool-changed <= hal_manualtoolchange.changed
 net tool-number iocontrol.0.tool-prep-number => hal_manualtoolchange.number
 net tool-prepare-loopback iocontrol.0.tool-prepare => iocontrol.0.tool-prepared

But we didn't work out how to make it retract up to our limit switch on a tool change, yet. 

The stamp we made was used today. The resulting piece of silver looks good. They put it through the rollers on a too tight setting, though, and squished the stamp. So we'll have to make another.

 

Sodium Chloride solution 2.2V 5A, 2 hours, Mild Steel. 106mm x 55mm
John and I used a bigger tank for our electro etching. We also had a fish tank pump making bubbles of air come up from the bottom. ( We made some holes in a plastic pipe and  blocked the end )

We also tried writing on a stainless steel spoon with a CD marker and doing it for 20mins.

Engraving mild steel

I bought some new mild steel sheet yesterday. It was 1.5mm thick. It was much newer than the other steel I got. It sanded clean very easily and was not pitted with rust. I engraved this with a 3mm slot drill, a 1mm slot drill and my engraving tool; nominally 27.5 degrees half angle, 0.1mm cutting diameter at the tip.

I was pleased with the result, although I had to tidy it up with my pen-knife and sand and polish it to get shiny ridge tops. Also, the fine detail pass at 0.05mm depth left a step on the ridges.