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!

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!

Last night I went back to the Artisan’s Asylum for the first time since getting back.

The blackfoot CNC router I built back in the fall is still in regular use and seems to be holding up well.

It’s being run by my friend Jeffrey, who’s been teaching classes in Computer Aided Machining (CAM) software (which you can sign up for here!).  While the idea was to build up a solid base of people who can use the machine, it was hard for me to gauge how often it’s actually getting used.  I also noticed a few things about the current state of the machine; some good, some bad.

The good:

• The stepper motors are running very quietly; I suspect that this is due to the switch to a g540 stepper motor driver setup which is properly tuned.  I have the same setup, but for whatever reason I was unable to properly tune mine (I suspect that I was using the wrong tool).
• Limit switches have been added so that the machine can auto-home.
• Our friend Calvin made a switch for the router so that it can be turned on and off by EMC2.
• A slot cut into the vacuum mount  makes loosening the collet nut possible without removing the router from the gantry.
• A ring of LEDs  on the underside of the vacuum mount helps illuminate the cutting area.

The bad:

• The aluminum rails show significant wear from the v-groove bearings.  While this should not effect the accuracy of the machine in the X and Y axis, it might cause slight variation in Z, especially towards the ends of the axis where the wear is less even.
• Apparently the shaft of the Y axis stepper motor snapped off during a long job not too long ago.

Those two issues are also things that might affect the Kikori; thankfully I already have solutions in mind for both that I’ll implement as soon as I have it back up and running.

Speaking of reviving the Kikori, I saw the space for it; unfortunately it’s full of stuff which will have to be moved.  Since I don’t know whose stuff it is or where it should go, I can’t move forward on setting up my space.  However, I’ll be meeting with the guy who’s currently renting the space to get all that figured out soon.

In the meantime, my Kickstarter project is almost ready!  Just a few more things to set up and it’ll be ready to launch.  Stay tuned!

>Yesterday was a comedy of errors.  The day started well enough with some test cuts of small pieces to test slot clearances, and all went well.  Then I decided to mill out something big: the standing computer desk:

Now, while for the most part it fits together without hardware, the adjustable keyboard rack does require the drilling of the holes.  After figuring out how to get poor ‘ol CamBam (free version) to drill holes (and testing this), I started the program.
It started out ok, but then by the third hole it started generating a good deal of smoke.  It took lots of experimenting with feed rates, pecking, and other such stuff to figure out what was going on:  I was trying to drill holes with a downcut bit.  
For the non-machinists out there, allow me to explain: your standard drill bit is what’s called an upcut bit, that is the spiral flutes of the bit will bring chips up to the top of the bit.  This is good for high-speed cutting, where you have to worry about keeping the bit clear.  However, the drawback to using upcut bits in a CNC router is that it will cause the face of your material to chip and break near the cut, especially if you’re working on a laminate material like plywood.  For this reason I bought downcut bits, where the flutes of the bit spiral the other way.  This eliminates chipping on the face, but has other drawbacks, such as not being good at drilling holes.  What was happening to me is that the MDF dust created by the bit was being kept down in the hole where it was compressed and rubbed against itself a high speed, causing it to burn.  To fix this, I changed the program so that I’d only drill shallow holes, the plan being to take the pieces over to the drill press and finish them after they were cut out.
Just before I was going to start cutting the actual pieces out, suddenly everything shut off.  Turns out someone in the wood shop next to me blew a fuse.  To avoid this in the future I used an extension cord to plug into a different outlet.  I thought nothing of this at the time, but it would haunt me the rest of the night.  After that I could not get the machine to do what I wanted.  It wouldn’t always move when it was told, and nothing I did or changed seemed to help.  At 11pm I decided to call it a night and went home.
I came in this morning and after implementing a clamping system I thought up to keep the workpiece from moving (we thought that perhaps this was causing some of the error), I got back to work.
As one would imagine, the same problem was still there, but this time I noticed that it seemed to be limited to the Y and Z motors.  I checked the connections, moved cords around to avoid possible interference (even though they were shielded), but no dice.  The most annoying thing was that it would work fine until I actually went to run a program.  A stroke of luck finally showed me what was going on:  I turned the router on and had the program start and then when I saw it was moving I turned on the shop vac.  I look back to see that the Y motor had stopped moving right when I had hit the vac’s switch.  Remember when I changed outlets?  Turns out the new one didn’t supply the same amount of current as the old one, so the motors weren’t getting enough juice when the router and vac were on as well.
They’re now on a different circuit.  Off to cutting!