Dream at the top of your lungs

Sooo it’s been a while since this blog has seen any action and I’ve latched on to the idea that betaorbust will be heading back to its original design and pick up as a blog for the various side projects I’m continuously working on.

With that said:

Recently I’ve started looking at CNC machines with Kyle Marsh and Chris Gilmer (for a project that I’ll detail in a future post) and we found DIYLILCNC. Unfortunately they’re still in the “working the bugs out” phase and one major thing they were lacking was a 3D model (honestly, crazy engineering respect to the guys who did this using only illustrator and some WICKED spatial reasoning.)

But really… it’s 2010 and anything this complex should have a digital representation to facilitate redesign etc. To that end I threw down maybe 40ish hours of nights/weekend/lunch/dull meetings/etc to bring you this:

It’s a full build (minus the Dremel they use for a power plant) right down to accurately modeled machine screws and bolts.

Full CAD of the DIYLILCNC (JF Mark 10)

Improvements over the existing design/drawings include:

• Made walls square. Now with 90 degree power! (Note: this wasn’t a HUGE issue just a degree here and there)
• All hardware (bearings, bolts, washers, rods, etc) modeled off of McMaster drawings where available. Measured parts I had in the lab when I couldn’t find McMaster drawings.
• Fixed a flaw where the Y Drive Belt dragged against a misaligned hole when the gantry wasn’t working near the center of its range.
• With a fully-assembled model any gaps in the documentation can be referenced against the CAD

At some point I’d like to build one of these but I think I’ll hold off until Version 2.

The plans and model are controlled under the virus-like CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license and have been submitted back to the project as of this morning.

For those interested the package can be downloaded here (again, in the grips of CC A-SA so make sure you post that if you use em)

Filed under: CAD, Engineering, Projects on May 17th, 2010 | No Comments »

It’s been a LONG time since I made a “real” post and this will, in no possible way, count as breaking that streak. As a bit of an update to the last post: Badier did in fact have hypothermia. We ended up in the medical suite in the National History Museum where he pulled an AMAZING turnaround which you will have to ask him about yourself. We saw our new President take on his next mission which was a mind-blowing experience (jury still out on how he’s doing overall but it’s MUCH better than the last guy.)

In lieu of an actual post, I’ll leave you with this link to the photo album. The pictures tell the story and at 1,000 words per image you can just imagine this is a 45,000 word epic post.

On a side note: I changed the underlying software of the site to not save my tweets as new posts. They’ve now moved to the sidebar to help reduce the clutter that is this page :)

Filed under: Amazing, From Twitter, Rants, Sleep Deprivation, Suck on February 7th, 2009 | 2 Comments »

Trying to find something hot to pull Badier back from the edge of hypothermia….

Filed under: From Twitter on January 20th, 2009 | 2 Comments »

On the National Mall! Started at 4th st. Made it in at 12th…. Still awesome!

Filed under: From Twitter on January 20th, 2009 | No Comments »

Initiating PROJECT AWESOME.
On the bus-to-the-plane-to-the-DC-to-the-new-president!

Filed under: From Twitter on January 16th, 2009 | No Comments »