Sindrian Arts

I’ve realized a couple things about myself over the last month or so.  One was hard to face, but the other has given me a useful tool.

The first thing is this: I am not good at motivating myself.  Left to my own devices I take too long to get out the door in the morning, I don’t stay focused at work, I take too many breaks, and I give in to the temptation to go home at a reasonable hour.  However, as I’ve learned by doing some consulting work, when I’m part of a team it is the exact opposite.  Without any overt pressure I can stay focused and productive for much longer.  I’m being mentored by a wonderful man named Dan Trajman who comes by the Artisan’s Asylum to help people like me, and he tells me that this is fairly common, which does take some of the sting out of it.

Another thing Dan told me about the connection between the number of decisions one has to make in a day, and the quality of those decisions.  I’ve been thinking about this one for a while, and it does help explain why I’ve been doing less well then I thought I’d be doing.  Put simply, I’ve over-extended myself.  For example, here’s what’s on my plate at the moment: finishing up these rewards, last year’s taxes, getting health insurance, getting my truck repaired, running the Maker programming track for a local convention (come to Arisia!), and starting another CNC-related venture (this time with partners!).  I’m actively trying to shorten this list, but a lot of it I simply can’t abandon (this project, for example).  Still, I’m looking to get help where I can, and as I chip away at it that list will get smaller.  I just have to be careful not to add to it.

Fall down seven times, get up eight.

-Japanese proverb

This morning, my alarm either failed to go off, or I slept through it.  Then I had a small argument with my girlfriend which depressed me far more than it should have (probably due to low blood sugar; I hadn’t yet had breakfast).  Next, I discovered that the door to the basement of our house somehow got locked, so I spent a fruitless 40 minutes trying to pick the lock.  At this point, I was late to run some errands in my un-air-conditioned truck, so I had missed the coolest part of the day.

I make myself some iced coffee, and head out.

On my way to grab some quick breakfast, I discover that it does not feel as bad outside as I had feared.  After eating, my mood is much improved.  Next, I discover that my errands will take much less time than I had originally thought.  Finally, when I get into the shop I find my dial calipers which I had lost a week ago (in a drawer in my desk, no less).  Not only are they very useful on a daily basis, but they had been a gift from a good friend, and I had been very sad to loose them.

Life always has it’s ups and downs, but they’ve felt more exaggerated for me this past year.  The Kikori would break, causing me to make a big improvement.  I’d have an unexpected expense just before getting a big job.  Through it all though, I’ve kept in mind the above proverb.  No matter what happens, just keep going.  Persist.

This is what Jimmy wanted.

A couple weeks ago, Jimmy Rodgers (designer of the LOL shield, among other things) was teaching a soldering workshop with Mitch Altman at the Artisan’s Asylum, and he realized that the Asylum didn’t have a Hackerspace Passport stamp.

An hour before the class, he came to me and asked if I could make one.  I was skeptical, having never milled rubber before, but I told him I’d give it a shot.  He sent me the vector graphics files for the Asylum logo, and an hour later, I handed him a milled stamp!  With just a little cleaning up, it was stamping the Asylum logo beautifully.

This is one of the many things I love about CNC technology: you can go from an idea to a physical product at blinding speed.  Idea to product in an hour.  Amazing.

No, Sindrian Arts isn’t on the cover of Distro.

We MADE the cover!  On the Kikori!

Apparently they saw the sign I made to attract Engadget to my space at the Artisan’s Asylum, and decided something like that would be awesome for their cover.

I couldn’t agree more.  I’m very pleased with how this turned out.

The funny thing is, the version that they used wasn’t even supposed to have been made!  Here’s what happened: the guys at Distro wanted me to make the sign out of two hardwood plywoods: white birch and clear pine.  However, my local supplier was out of clear pine, so he substituted the fir instead.  I did manage to find a knot-free piece of pine plywood that was big enough around the shop, so I sent them versions in all three woods: birch, fir, and pine.  As it turns out, they used the fir, and it looks great.  You should go download it right now!  There’s a great article about the Artisan’s Asylum.

I love doing custom jobs like this.  If you would like something similar for your publication (or wall!), drop me a line!

That sucked.

I was in the middle of a job when I hear a pop and see the chain on the far side of the table suddenly go slack.

Turns out the shaft of the motor on that side of the gantry had just sheared off (the pic shows it with the drive sprocket still attached).

This, boys and girls, is why you never leave a CNC machine unsupervised.  I was able to stop the machine immediately before it messed up the job in progress.  I could still jog the gantry around the table, since that motor is one of two that drive the x axis, but I would not be able to maintain any accuracy farther than a foot or so from the side that still had a motor.

Thankfully, that was enough to make new motor mounts.  As you can see, they are a huge improvement over the old mounts, which were cobbled together back when I was figuring out how best to drive the x axis (I should really write a back-dated post about that).  Other than being much cleaner and more solid, they also incorporate a feature that should prevent this from happening again: support for the motor shaft.

As you can see from  the pic above, the drive sprocket was on the very end of the motor shaft, so when I applied tension to the chain it was actively pulling down on the shaft.  No wonder it eventually broke.  With the new mount, the end of the motor shaft is supported by a bearing, so the force from the chain is distributed.

I also finally got some cable track for all the cords!  I haven’t quite finished setting it up, but I’ll post some pics when I do!

I should have done this sooner.

I designed all these neat products for Kickstarter rewards, why not make offer them for sale as well?  Naturally, I’ll be shipping the rewards before I start shipping them as product, but the rest of the screwdrivers and tablet stands will be out the door by the end of next week, so I’m not worried about that.

I would be working on them right now, but one of the stepper motor shafts broke the other day, so until the replacement motor comes on Tuesday I can’t make anything.  Thankfully, it won’t take me long to finish up the drivers and stands once it is.

In the mean time, check out my Etsy store!  I’ll be adding more stuff as I finish off shipping more rewards, so check back often for new stuff!

I cannot tell you how excited I am to have been featured on Engadget!

I had a great time yesterday talking with Brad Heater and Terrence Obrien about the Kikori.  As an open source hardware project, the success of the Kikori really depends on building a strong community behind it, so getting such great exposure is really invaluable.

If this is your first time visiting Sindrian Arts, welcome!  If you’d like to learn more about the machine in the video, the Kikori, head on over to our store for a full description.  There you’ll also be able to purchase full kits!

If you want to build a Kikori of your own using the open source designs, you can grab the files from the design file page.

Thanks!

Man I wish I had done more posting in the last month.

Yesterday a crew from Engadget was at the Artisan’s Asylum interviewing people. I’ve followed Engadget for years, so the prospect of making it on their site was really exciting.

Question was, how to get their attention?  After all, the Asylum is filled with people doing amazing things.  Then it hit me: make a sign!

Sure enough, they stopped by, and once they saw a self-replicating CNC machine being controlled by a wiimote, they were hooked.

Check out the article they wrote here!

Well, shoot.

As I mentioned in my latest Kickstarter update I was sick all weekend with a fever. Tuesday I felt tired but mostly fine, but then I started to go downhill again, and woke up this morning feeling worse than before.

*sigh*

I really don’t have time for this.  I’m doing my best to take it easy, but I really hate loosing days.  My hope is that I’ll feel well enough to finish up the $20 Kickstarter rewards tonight and get them in the mail tomorrow, but we’ll see.

First off, apologies for the long silence.  There are so many things I want to post updates about, but for now, one thing at a time.

This is a picture I just took of an accuracy test I did last week.

I had the Kikori mill a 1 square inch pattern with a 1/8″ bit, then jogged it all over the table for a few minutes, then had it mill another square offset 1/4″ in both directions from the first one.

If my machine was perfect, the arms of those “L” shapes would be 0.125″ thick.  Instead, they were 0.135″.  Not only that, they were all within 0.002″ of each other.

!!!

This is great news.  This means that the Kikori is maintaining beautiful accuracy.  However, that was not the only test I did that day.

I also milled  a very large “L” shaped cut to measure how square the gantry was, and the results of that test were not as good.  I measured about 0.1″ of deflection over 20″, which means that one side of my gantry is about a quarter of an inch ahead of the other side.  That means that it can’t make a true right angle, which as you can imagine is quite a problem.

I’ve talked to several people about this issue, and here’s what I’ve realized: the gantry could be squared, but it would mean a lot of tests.  Once I did square it I could even install another limit switch and create a process that could return the gantry to square without testing.  While this sounds good, here’s the issue: I’m not just designing this machine for me.

To be a good product, this machine should not require huge amounts of calibration.  Also, there’s still the risk that one of the X axis motors would skip a step throwing it out of true without any warning.

While this might sound bad, there is a solution: new rails.

One of the disadvantages of the rail system I’m using is that it makes this kind of deflection much easer than other solutions.  I’ll let you know how it goes!