My Garage Workshop is a site for my various hobbies, including my homemade CNC machine, Reprap 3d printer, metalworking on my Enco 3-in1 machine, woodworking, aluminum casting, electronics, and more that I do in my garage in Florida
Please check out my blog posts below. On the right there's a list of my most popular posts, or using the menu you should be able to find all that I have on here. if you have any questions - feel free to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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Jamie
Hey Everybody! Just a quick post about some excitement I've had the last couple of weeks and thought I'd share it :)
A few weeks ago I was doing a job - probably one of the biggest jobs I've done on the CNC machine in 10 years! So I set it up, as I normally do, and watched it for a few minutes to make sure everything was working as it should and then went inside to finish my coffee.
So I go out to the garage a few minutes later to check on things and upon opening the door I immediately smell it... You know it - that "Fried Electronics" smell - the magic smoke!
I round the corner to where the CNC machine it - and sure enough, there's my CNC controller board - on fire!
So I shut everything down, make sure power is removed from the whole system, and start to check things out...
Turns out one of my wires (The Y axis I think) got caught on the hold down clamp, pulled taught and broke - that blew THAT driver I assume and that caused the X axis driver to blow up too somehow... Here's a shot of the poor board!
This was a Hobby CNC pro board and has worked flawlessly for like ten years! It was a very sad moment when I realized that *I* killed it.
So... Wiping tears... moving on...
I had a cheap 5 axis driver board I'd gotten off eBay a few years ago, it's the TB6560 board. So I wired it all up and got it all set up in Mach3 and went to tune the motors.
Now, with the HobbyCNC board I could get about 60IPM out of the machine with only the occasional stall, so I would cut at 40IPM to be safe... I could ony get 20IPM out of this TB6560 board! I tried everything - wiring the motors bipolar then Unipolar, tried another power supply, etc... It sucked, but I had to get this job done (which was already going to take 6 hours, now it'll be more like 20 hours!)
Find Zero again... Start the job... Let it go for like 8 hours, no problems... Paused the job and set the router at zero and took the rest of the night off... Next day I start up the job again, watch it for like an hour - no problems... Went inside for like 5 minutes to get a drink and sure enough, don't ya know it, when I came back out there had been a stall and the router had routed right through the piece! Here's a picture of that nonsense!
To add to that, the accuracy totally stunk because (hopefully you can see) the ridges on the finish? it's supposed to be smooth, so the Z Axis was not returning to the same spot every time at all! So at that point I was totally frustrated, something like 10 hours down the tubes!
Turns out though that the guy I am making this for is going to use it to make a mold and cast them, so he didn't care if it was filled with wood filler - whew!
Still though, I wasn't going to mess around anymore - I jumped online and ordered all new motors (figured I'd upgrade them too) and all new driver boards, power supply, the works! I ordered from Automation Technologies, and they shipped the same day and I got everything a few days later - very pleased with them!
I Took Friday off to wire everything up and get back in business and I made a little video of the results - I finished cutting out that piece at like 100IPM and could consistently get 120IPM on the X Axis (which is my tightest one) - very happy with the results! Here's a pic of the final piece...
Oh and I also used some PVC pipe to construct and overhead wire harness thing (the X Axis wires are actually running THROUGH the PVC) - so no more chance that the wires will catch on anything!
Here's a shot of the new electronics wired up for testing
and finally - here's the video that shows some movement off the new stuff! - Thanks for checking out the post and I'll try to post more - I promise! :)
I got a Particle Photon in last month's Hackerbox and played with it a little and I needed a good idea to work on. I also bought an Amazon Echo device as well a few months ago and have been working on creating some skills for Alexa. So I worked out some integration between the two!
Here's an example of controlling the Photon through Alexa. The trick was using the IFTTT website to make the integration a breeze! If you haven't checked out IFTTT then you need to - it's very cool!
Without further ado - here's the video :)
You may be cool - but you'll never be "Jamie's homemade CNC machine plays The Entertainer" Cool! ;) hehe
I thought this was cool anyway - Search Google for "MIDI to GCode" upload your MIDI File and set a few parameters - and download your GCode to play on your machine! Pretty Cool!
Make sure your volume is turned up ;)
Hey everybody! So recently I bought a Smithy Granite 1340 MAX Mill Drill Lathe - I love it, it's a great machine and a huge upgrade over my previous mill drill lathe. I do have one small problem with it though - there's no real "finishing pass" gear. The slowest speed and lowest gear is still cutting 52 threads per inch and while that's OK, and I could grind a tool with a radius tip to make it even better, I'd rather just have a finish pass speed!
So I made one!
I've worked with the Parallax Propeller and Easy Driver boards for years, I used them in my Monster in a Box project, and have used them with my stretching machine project as well - they are really easy to work with and the Parallax Propeller is super easy to program.
Here's a quick wiring diagram of how I wired things up
and here's a video of me explaining a bit on how I did it...
Title says it all - I've been playing around with a 2.5W laser I got off eBay and wanted to do a little laser engraving. So I mounted (and by "mounted" I mean used a clamp and simply clamped it) on my CNC machine and wrote a program to engrave a dragon.
At first I plugged and unplugged the laser to turn it off during the moves. But this post is about how I achieved control from Mach3 to turn it on and off.
Planning ahead I wired an outlet to a relay board suited for 100vac - I figured I'd be able to use it to turn on and off my router as well - why not :)
Then I used output 16 on the HobbyCNC Pro board and also pulled 5v from the HobbyCNC Pro board to power the relay board as well - pretty easy wiring really
OK Stay tuned for some posts with my new toy - er um - Tool... soon :) Jamie
Hey everybody I'm back with another video :) two in one month! one week even! :)
In this video I'm going to show how I wired up this animatronic head with the Propeller Activity Board - The Parallax Propeller Activity Board is my new favorite go to board! :)
Hey everybody! I worked out some upgrades and improvements to the Monster in a Box Halloween prop I made last year - so check them out! And I'm also working on a new video format - hope it's not too CHEESY LOL
The first rail system was made with wooden dowels, and then I found some aluminum rods at the big box store so I decided those looked a little more "pro" and remember it's not about whether you win or lose - it's how you look playing the game ;) So here's a look at the new and improved DSLR Rail Rig
In the picture you can see my home made DSLR rail rig and also the homemade tablet holder mounted on the tripod - Using an app for controlling the camera from the tablet, I can face the tablet and camera towards me and see if I am framed in the shot or not - that's really helpful for my low budget DIY videos where I am the camera man AND the actor LOL
My camera rig consists of
OK so here's a picture - sorry the picture is taken with my phone because the camera is mounted on the rail system! LOL