What first?

There are so many problems to tackle. There are almost certainly problems that I have no idea I need to tackle, and I already can think of a lot of problems.

• Don't know what other climbing walls or real life boulders are like. Other climber friends talk about "5x10" and "v4" and all this other jargon I've never heard of before. Who knows what major parts of climbing I'm missing.
• The last time I did anything with pointing a camera at the night sky it was mounted to the back of a 24" asteroid hunter inside an observatory. This has basically nothing to do with amateur astrophotography and everything to do with image processing and math problems.
• I own relatively little gear that is suited to distance hiking. And by limited, I mean I've got a fleece and a gortex rain jacket for biking that are probably pretty solid bets.
• Camera gear is heavy and spacious. Hiking is light and compact.
• Astronomy gear is extremely heavy. Mass is usually a preferred thing because it cuts down on vibration and movement.
• Rock climbing is dangerous, and I'm super accident prone. In the last two years I've had two concussions, a dozen stitches, two broken toes and a broken metatarsal. I don't remember the last time I didn't have at least a few bruises.
• The place we are going is called "B l o o d M o u n t a i n." I don't know anything about it except for that fact. Seems ominous.
• I am extremely sensitive to cold. Every time the temperature dips below 72 I start shopping for apartments in Ecuador.
• The guys want to do some filming. Like real filming. I'm going to see about inventing some gear that is intended to take some killer shots despite being in the middle of nowhere.

Enough going against me? Sure. But let's crack this nut. I've got about a month. Step one? Local rock climbing gym. Meet Aguille:

From Rocket Sparrow

I am now a fan. While they have a bit of everything I went for bouldering. First time out of the house, so they explained the V system to me and I went to town. First a V0, then V1, then a couple of V2s (these were starting to get a little harder for me), then managed two different V3s. The V4 I could only make it halfway through. Things I learned:

• Pocket grips. I don't have any of these.
• compact spaces: I'm good at this because I'm really flexable.
• I have awful technique. I make up for most things by just being really strong, so I had a habit of bailing myself out of bad situations by just hoisting myself up one handed or making a good leap and grab. This is not a sustainable solution.
• The people there are super nice. Met some great folks climbing, and they really want to see people progress.
• Climbing makes girls incredibly fit. Ladies? Oh Em Gee. If you're looking for a way to get in shape this clearly works.

The New Adventure

So I realized I kept moving on with new projects and learning new things, but not doing a lot of sharing the things I learned and did. This was always a good place for that, so I'll introduce my new adventure, bring a little up to speed, and then we all follow along as I figure stuff out. Sound good?


This adventure really starts a couple of years ago when we, on a whim, decided to build a small rock climbing (bouldering) wall in our living room. Please note this was in no way a wise idea, as the house was a rental, but we went for it anyway. You can see the success of this first step here:

From projects

It got us interested in rock climbing in general, but eventually we had to move out (and thus take down our artwork). Roll ahead a couple of years, I own my own place, 12' ceilings, and almost within days of signing the paperwork we started building what turned in to this gorgeous thing we have today:

From New rock wall 2011

It has bouldering, it has lead climbing, it can even be used for some short top rope climbing to practice belay systems and learning all the proper techniques of various climbing systems and harnesses. Most of all, it's insanely fun and is a good reason to not bother to own a TV or pay a cable bill.

That brings us up to now, where some friends have decided it's time to take it to the next level: hike out to a good bouldering spot (real life bouldering, like with boulders) and make the most of it. In addition we're looking to go camping for a few days at the spot, do some photography and filming, and for my own love of astronomy I'd like to try to do some minor astrophotography. And that brings us up to today...well except for one thing...

Turns out these aspirations are generally mutually exclusive, and as usual I'm looking to bite off more than I can chew. Carry heavy camera and astrophotography gear for a long hike, along with all the stuff for camping and survival in the deep mountains for several days? Add in rock climbing gear? Can I do it? Can I make it happen by the end of November when scheduled?

I have no idea. But I'm going to try. Also, did I mention I've never done real astrophotography outside of a pre-set-up lab before? Nor have I hiked long distances? Or camped in the cold? Or climbed anywhere besides my living room(s)?

This should be [fun/insane/horrible/suicidal/painful/freezing/impossible].

Results

Don't use this kind of vise. It's garbage, doesn't hold things well, you will break it, and it's very hard to get things to settle in flat because when you tighten it one side lifts up. I expirimented with using ATF for machine fluid. It was better than nothing, but also not the right answer.

This is part of a throttle body bracket. It is currently installed on my car:

Some other parts machined out, after all the mods but with another issue we didn't discover until after these were done. No harm though, they came out quite good:

Ketchup 2

The next weak spot was that we were relying on the motor's bearings to take thrust forces being transferred back down the ballscrew. This works up to a point (although it puts some stresses on them that will shorten their life), but once you exceed a certain amount they will push back and forth about 1/8". Most solve this by having a mounting block with thrust bearings holding the ballscrew end, and then using a spider coupler between the motor and the ballscew to sort for misalignment.

And that would probably be prefereable, but I didn't design for it and had to get creative. So above you can see one end of my motor (fortunately it has shafts on both ends) with a stop I lathed out holding a thrust bearing against the motor casing. There is another one on the other side doing the same thing, trapping the shaft in place. This was actually completely effective, and likely how I will do things in the future too. It saves on parts so long as you have some alignment adjust-ability in your motor and/or ballnut mounts.

Ketchup

And other reasons I adore the English language. I am going to try to catch up on the progress the machine has made, because a lot has happened lately. The results are that we have a darn good working machine (as you can see in the previous video) and it's only getting better as we learn.

First, once we put the spindle on some new flaws became apparent. We were getting a lot of chatter, the source of which we determined by means of high speed film (thank you modern DSLRs). The rails on Z were flexing, the whole frame was flexing, and all of that was leading to problems. This wasn't apparent with the router tool because it was taking off so little at a time (and creating a ton of heat, and taking forever).

So I replaced the Z rails with the next size up and triangulated the frame, adding a truss to the back of one mounting beaml:

Quick video

I'm really really behind on posting anything about this project, or anything for that matter. So many things have happened, including finishing the new spindle install, bracing the frame to add stiffness, real milling vices, and much much more. I hope to get back to updating the things on this project.

The video above shows it cutting aluminum with a 1/4" end mill at about 11 ipm. The depth was somewhere around 1/16" at the time. It doesn't seem to have any trouble with this at all, and in fact for the video we were having some problems with the lower axis. Some time in the past, without anyone realizing it, we must have driven it off the lead screw part way and lost most of the bearings out of the ballnut. There were maybe 10 in there where there should have been 80ish. I suspect we can go faster and cleaner once we get that sorted out.

CNC Pt. 14: Upgrades

Which brings us to our next thing: upgrading to a real spindle.



This is the 4/5hp spindle assembly from an X2 mini mill. The cast iron has been chopped down a bit to reduce weight, and the gear drive replaced with a belt drive for reliability and sound. There are a ton of advantages to a real spindle over a crappy router, too many to list, but here are a few big ones:

1: Play. There is almost none, so chatter is cut down drastically. This is better for your finished product and better for your bits.

2: Torque. A trim router has none. A VFD controlled motor maintains most of its torque at any rpm.

3: Collets. Rather than a crappy, 1/4" only 'collet' (which is really a badly designed chuck), this uses R8 collets (I also have an adapter to go to ER32 collets). This means flexibility in what bits I can use, less chance of them coming loose, and less runout.

4: Sound. Routers sound terrible, this has a pleasing hum to it.

5: Motor placement & type. Since it's far enough away from the business end, and mostly sealed off from the elements, this will make running coolant much easier.

CNC Pt. 13: More Tests

With that done it was time for some real tests. First in wood:



Then in aluminum!





There's some chatter in the router, and of course the router has to be run well above the appropriate cutting speed for aluminum. But it gets us by for some messing around.

CNC Pt. 12: T-Slot Table

Next up was the T-Slot table. This was also the first time the machine could really be used for something meaningfull, as all the holes were drilled by program. This was exciting for a lot of reasons, not the least of which that it was drilling aluminum for the first time.

CNC Pt. 11: Enclosure

I didn't realize how far behind I was on updating this project, but much has happened since the last post. The plan was always to make this an enclosed machine, and to make it as quiet as we could manage. The sides were covered with sheet metal, the sheet metal lined with automotive sound deadening material, and the front with a big piece of 0.25" lexan. The lexan is held in place with magnet strip, which also insures perfect alignment without needing pins.





It has become known as "The Evil Dishwasher."