Project Logs

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• Mass Production Demo

  anfroholic • 05/20/2017 at 23:11 • 0 comments

  Let's automate the production of 200 coasters with no human intervention.

  Coasters were cut from a standard sheet of 1/8" birch plywood.
  

  I set up the table saw fence and cut them all into strips

  I made a small crosscut sled that was set to make squares when aligned with the edge. It made cutting them all very easy.

  All cut. That was a lot more coasters than I expected when I started.
  

  All edges have been deburred and are ready to be engraved.

  This is the fixture I made for the arm to drop the coasters into to be engraved.

  I drilled holes in the CPU cooler mounts and the piece of polycarbonate I would be using to make this toolhead.

  Measuring the distances for the 4th axis that would later hold the vacuum gripper that will pick and place the coasters.

  All measured and cutting off the pieces that are not needed.

  Doing my first dry fit. I think this will work well.

  Measuring and attaching the 4th axis motor.

  I retrofitted an old pulley I used for a previous project after I

  accidentally broke the smaller pulley you see above and behind. In the

  end it was a good thing, I had to use the other pulley anyway.
  

  The suction cup is spring loaded to know when it's hit the top of a

  pile. Whenever possible I like to program my robots like a drunk

  walking down a hallway ;)
  

  Bringing in the Raspberries :)

  This is pretty much the most important part of the Processing script that ran the whole job.

  The arm was running Marlin at this point and I made some special M

  codes that would send strings out the serial port on command. The

  M400() calls finish every move that's in the buffer and the

  SERIAL_PROTOCOLPGM("XXXXX") commands send a string to the Raspberry Pi

  which is running the whole job.
  

  This was actually the first prototype for the evezor arm. I call them NOtotypes (the minimum viable prototype that will test critical aspects of a part) It failed miserably but I learned what I needed to look for when designing the next iteration.
  

  Same pieces I just had it on upside down.

  The sled is complete with 608zz ball bearings as wheels.

  I built the track the sled would run down.

  
  

  The sled would be actuated with a belt so the mounts had to be fairly strong, so I made a dado joint. Such class ;)
  

  
  

  This is the idler pulley. I looked around the shop for different materials for the belt and it turned out telephone wire performed the best. Who would have thought?
  

  This is the idler pulley. I looked around the shop for different

  materials for the belt and it turned out telephone wire performed the

  best. Who would have thought?

  Mounted and you can see the RAMPS board that performs the motion control for the slider.

  A shot of the slider all assembled. Sorry I didn't get a good shot of the stepper mount on the far side.

  On to the camera controller. This was a picture I sent to my

  Photographer (Thank you World Touch Productions for all your help!!) to

  make sure I got the right connectors for the shutter controllers.

  Whenever possible I prefer not to cut wires. So I soldered the wires directly to the switches. The top contact is ground, the middle contact is for the auto-focus and the bottom contact is for the shutter.
  

  
  

  I carved out the side so the wires could fit through and I could reattach the tops.
  

  All wired up to it's own Arduino and a relay board. This is the shutter controller.

  More code for the Arduino controlling the camera shutters.

  
  

  LIGHTS!
  

  
  

  CAMERA!!
  

  
  

  
  

  ACTION!!
  

  For those curious the toolpaths were created with Inkscape
  

  We made it! All done!
  

  200 coasters all piled up.
  

  200 coasters all piled up.
  

  Now we're really done!!
  

  
  

  This is a 12"x12"x12" box. This was a lot of coasters! See the video version and full source files for this project at http://evezor.com/coasters
  

• TSP Art

  anfroholic • 05/11/2017 at 22:22 • 0 comments

  Here I drew some pictures with a ballpoint pen.

  TSP (Traveling Salesman Problem) Art is created by turning an image into dots, then using a traveling salesman algorithm to connect the dots. Light and dark regions are created by differing point densities.

• PCB Fab and Assembly

  anfroholic • 05/09/2017 at 03:41 • 0 comments

  Here we mill traces and place surface mount LEDs and resistors.

  Traces were milled with a 1mm endmill with a standard 110V rotary tool.

  The components were 0603 and were picked and placed with a vacuum tool powered by compressed air.
  

• Laser Engraving

  anfroholic • 05/08/2017 at 21:28 • 0 comments

  We got the laser out again and did some engraving.

  The toolpath was created in Inkscape. I could have had Inkscape make a more efficient toolpath but just got rapid movements working and wanted to see how well they were working.

• Welding

  anfroholic • 04/11/2017 at 09:46 • 0 comments

  We will continue with metalworking and give our arm a shot at welding

  This turned out better than I would have imagined! It's a better welder than I am.

  Welder was a standard 110V handheld welder with flux wire.
  

  See more details at this project's page
  

• Plasma Cutting

  anfroholic • 04/07/2017 at 11:22 • 0 comments

  Today we plasma cut the letter E out of sheet metal.

  The toolehead is a standard handheld plasma cutter. I used a small solenoid for the trigger mechanism.

  The material is 12ga mild steel.

  The toolpath was created in inkscape

  See our blog post on this job at http://evezor.com/plasma-cutting/
  

• 3D Contour MIlling

  anfroholic • 04/06/2017 at 23:08 • 0 comments

  Today we Milled the letter P from our Open Source letter series we've been doing

  Our toolhead today is a full size 2hp router with a 1/4" ballmill.

  The stock material was a piece of brazillian cherry.

  The toolpath was created with Kiri:Moto. With all these projects, for better or worse, I tried my best to use open source software. I would have made a tutorial on this if I didn’t have such a bad experience using the software. It’s not the worst software ever but made some unusual decisions with some of its toolpaths. I will be looking for some better software, if you have some suggestions please leave a comment.

• 2.5D Milling

  anfroholic • 03/29/2017 at 10:42 • 0 comments

  Today we milled the Open Source Initiative's Logo

  Our toolhead today is a full size 2hp router with a 3/8″ 2 flute bit.

  The stock material is a laminated piece of brazillian cherry between two pieces of pine.

  The toolpath was created with Kiri:Moto. With all these projects, for better or worse, I tried my best to use open source software. I would have made a tutorial on this if I didn’t have such a bad experience using the software. It’s not the worst software ever but made some unusual decisions with some of its toolpaths. I will be looking for some better software, if you have some suggestions please leave a comment.

• Laser Cutting and Inkscape Tutorial

  anfroholic • 03/27/2017 at 07:13 • 0 comments

  Today we lasercut the letter E into some cardstock
  

  We used Inkscape to create the gcode for this letter.

  We also created a tutorial so you can learn to make patters of your own. See it here.

  Our toolhead here was just a little diode laser we source online that we put into a CPU heatsink and clamped to our arm.

• Glass Etching

  anfroholic • 03/22/2017 at 20:07 • 0 comments

  Today we etched the letter U into glass

  Our tool post, once again, was just a hunk of 2X4. Then we used a hose clamp to secure the rotary tool to the tool post.

  We used a diamond bit to do the glass etching and some lightly soapy water as coolant.

  The toolpath and design was created in Inkscape.
  

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