>
> One of the reasons I often drill a useless hole someplace at the start of
> the
> project, and write my code with that as the 0,0,0 point. That makes
> getting
> back to within a couple thou a bit easier.
>
That's a great idea. I would love an absolute positioning system - something
that was always the same for the mill, at least between full strip-downs,
and rebuilds.
Definitley test the ones you are going to use, & if its not up to that sort
> of
> music, there's always that 45 gallon roughneck cannister just outside the
> door to store it in till the truck comes by. I'd run these on a bit less,
> but that is what happened to be available.
>
One of the reasons I've been out of the list since last week was that I was
running my first intricate project, at least for me. It's a very simple
thing - two rings cut out of 1/4" aluminum to raise my coworker's Jeep
suspension by that much, but the ID needed to be radiused, and as they were
too big for my mini mill, I had to design the code to work by moving the
rotary table diagonally, doing the radiused hole with diagonally-incremented
steps, which makes all the radii actually the inverse of the square root of
2 times those radii, used to offset both X and Y. I got it all right, but it
kept failing. I finally did a full strip-down of the mill, polishing away
all rust on my Z column with a Dremel polisher, and recalibrating
everything, especially with the help I got in here to get values dialed in
properly, and the parts came out great.
Back on topic, I could definitely have used some cooling. I can only dig
through aluminum in 0.001" vertical increments, without stressing things, or
tearing apart my clamping assemblies, so it takes forever. The weather had
turned that day toward summer-like, and I had the mill's motor, 4 steppers,
and a shop vac going for 8 hours! It got really hot in that room, and I
couldn't even touch the motors. I'm actually thinking of running some pipe
from the portable A/C unit in the next room into the mill enclosure I'm
building, because putting it in a box like that will only make things worse.
> Watch your store bought cabling for the parport, make sure the cable you
> use
> actually has all 25 wires in it.
>
Will do! Thanks for the tip. I have a knack for excitedly running home, only
to find I've gotten the wrong part, or cable. It can really ruin an evening.
> >There's never nearly
> >enough time in a day, or a weekend.
>
> Chuckle, heck, I'd be happy to have enough time to get what I want to do
> done
> before I fall over. I suspect my plans will outlast me, diabetis
> beginning
> to slow me down, darnit. I hate unfinished business. :)
>
No talking like that! I just got here! You have lots of work left to do,
teaching us newbs how to not lose our fingers, and such :)
-g
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