Sindrian Arts

I’ve been dissatisfied with how I handled my Kickstarter project for a while.

Several ideas have been kicking around inside my head for a couple weeks, but this morning I got kick in the rear.  Mcphill, one of my larger backers, commented on my project, noting that he had heard nothing for several months.  He had voiced his displeasure with my progress before too, as had another of my backers.  Back then I didn’t know how to handle it, so I did nothing (silly me).  This time, I resolved to fix things.

I immediately posted a comment thanking mcphill for the comment, and promised to write an update right there and then.  Which I did.  In it, I apologized for the lack of contact and progress, outlined what I think I did wrong, and explained how I’d do better from now on.

It felt really good to get it all off my chest.  I’ve felt horrible about this for months, but apparently I needed that kick to get me to finally bite the bullet.  I’m not proud that that’s what got me to finally do something, but I’m glad that I finally have.

One of the things I committed to do is to get all the smaller rewards out the door within the next 30 days.  It’s a pretty scary deadline, but I think I can do it.  I might have to take time off from the day job, but I’ll do it.

Speaking of which, I’m off to work at the Asylum now.  Wish me luck!

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!

I had forgotten how involved moving can be.

Really!  While I was at DAAP I moved almost every three months for four years to go on co-ops, so I got pretty used to it.  However, I forgot that moving one person into an apartment for three months is very different from moving several people into a house for the foreseeable future.  There’s a lot more unpacking, for starters.

Which is why I’m behind yet again.  Believe me, my lack of progress these past couple weeks is really starting to get to me.  Which is why today, I will mill out a set of gantry parts!  Damn it, this will get done even if I have to stay up to some ungodly hour to do it!

Off to work!

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I’ve been getting ready to move to another apartment and fighting an evil little bug for the past couple weeks or so.

As some of you have noticed, the forum and store links have stopped working; that was on purpose as I’m in the process of figuring out how to proceed from here.  I’ve removed the links from the menu to avoid confusion.

I’ve got so much to post about: there have been small setbacks, huge breakthroughs, and many plans in the works.  The final push for moving is this Saturday, so my hope is to put some of my plans into action starting Sunday.

In the mean time, thanks for your patience.

I’m proud to announce that the Sindrian Arts store is now live!

I am offering full Kikori kits, MDO gantry parts, hardware kits, and electronics kits.  To celebrate this, I’m offering free shipping for the next week!

It’s been a long road getting to this point; a lot longer than I thought, but thanks to my friends, family, and fellow inmates of the Artisan’s Asylum, I’m finally here.

I have to give special thanks to my Kickstarter backers.  They’ve waited patiently as I moved from Cincinnati to Boston, rebuilt my machine at MakeIt Labs, moved out when they got shut down, and rebuilt again at the Artisan’s Asylum.  Thank you all for sticking with me through everything.

Finally!

Who knew that putting together the DXFs would take so much time?

I thought I was done with these at least five times before finding something to fix.  Finally, they’re ready.  You can download the .zip here.

Please let me know what you think!

I had thought that I would’ve been able to get the Kikori plans out yesterday. After all, all I had to do was export the layered SVGs as DXFs.

Apparently this is easer said than done.

I had copied all the layers (different layers for different milling operations) into Inkscape (an open source vector graphics program), which I knew could export DXFs. What I didn’t discover until I had already assembled these files is that Inkscape’s DXF export won’t support layers. I found a plugin that’s supposed to address that issue (and others), but for whatever reason I could not get it to work reliably; one file exported fine, while the other did not have things positioned correctly.

Eventually I ended up using DraftSight, another free program, to re-assemble one of the files.  I’ll release the files later today.

My apologies for the long silence; the last month has been a bit of a rollercoaster.

Right after I finished milling out the parts for the next Kikori gantry up at MakeIt Labs, it got shut down.  This meant that instead of getting to work on the kickstarter rewards I had to dismantle my entire operation up there, move everything down to my new space at the Artisan’s Asylum (living up to their name, as always), and build a new gantry first.

If you’ve been following my photostream on Flickr, you’ve watched as I assembled a new Kikori gantry.  While I did find a few minor things that needed tweaking, for the most part it came together beautifully.  This was especially encouraging since the Kikori up at MakeIt was having all sorts of mysterious issues that prevented it from maintaining positional accuracy (given that the new machine has none of these issues, I’m told that it could’ve been caused by a “dirty” power supply in the MakeIt building, which would’ve caused the machine to miss steps).  This showed that even under a worse-case scenario, the Kikori is still capable of self-replication.

In rebuilding the Kikori I also tried out a couple different methods of driving the X axis.  The problem I was having with the original setup of using a single NEMA 23 motor to drive sprockets on both sides of the gantry was that I’d get significant twisting along the drive shafts; enough that the gantry would ‘chatter’ as is moved in that direction.  My first solution was to upgrade to a NEMA 34 motor which uses a 1/2″ drive shaft instead of the 23′s 1/4″.  While this did eliminate the chatter, it also revealed that without the twisting  rod acting like a spring, the motor wasn’t powerful enough.  Finally, I decided to try using two seperate NEMA 23 motors to directly drive the sprockets on either side.  This proved to be by far the best solution: it gave me the best strength, the smoothest motion, and also eliminated the need for drive shafts, bearings, and couplers.

The Kikori is now performing beautifully, maintaining accuracy to within 1/32 of an inch even at feed rates of 100 IPM!  This means that production of the Kickstarter rewards has finally begun.  I’ll be milling out the sets of gantry parts first, then working my way down the list of rewards.  I hope to get them all out within a month, but we’ll see how things work out.

This also means that I’m about to start selling Kikori kits as well!  After all the changes and additions, it looks like I’ll just be able to keep it under the $5,000 goal, but I’m going to try to do a special introductory sale to get things moving.  I’ll send out an announcement soon!

It was pointed out to me that since my plans have solidified somewhat recently, I should share them so people know what I’m up to!

My plans have been in a near-constant state of flux since I got to Boston.  My original plan was to move into the Artisan’s Asylum in early September (the original move-in date), set up, have all the Kickstarter rewards made and shipped by mid-November at the latest, and then start selling kits to the general public.  However, due to many things outside of anyone’s control, the Asylum only opened their doors to renters last Friday.  In the meantime, I set up the Kikori at MakeIt Labs in Nashua, NH thinking that I would simply make stuff there, just at a slower pace (due to the hour-long commute).  Unfortunately, I’ve spent the last couple months chasing down issues, so I haven’t been able to make anything until quite recently.

Now, this also means that I’m going to have to stretch the Kickstarter funds farther than I had intended to, since they’re what’s been supporting me all this time.  Because of this, I’m going to have to start generating some income sooner rather than later, which sadly means that I won’t be able to focus solely on making rewards.  My plan is still to have all of them sent out before the end of the year, but at the same time I’m going to be working on other projects to sell in the meantime.

So, my beloved Kickstarter backers!  Know that when you might see me post about working on other things, I have not forgotten about you!  It is still my intention to have all of your rewards out in time for the holiday season.  In the meantime, stay tuned to see what I’ll be cooking up next!