cnc hacks

910 Articles

Wire Bender Aims To Take Circuit Sculptures To The Next Level

July 1, 2019 by 28 Comments

It doesn’t seem as though bending wire would be much of a chore, but when you’re making art from your circuits, it can be everything. Just the right angle in just the right place can make the difference between a circuit sculpture that draws gasps and one that’s only “Meh.”

[Jiří Praus] creates circuit sculptures that are about as far away from the “Meh” end of the spectrum as possible. And to help him make them even more spectacular, he has started prototyping a wire-bending machine to add precision to his bends. There’s no build log at the moment, but the video below shows progress to date. All the parts are 3D-printed, with two NEMA 17 steppers taking care of both wire feed and moving the bending head. It appears that the head has multiple slots for tools of different shapes. For now, the wire is rotated around its long axis manually, but another stepper could be added to take care of that job.

[Jiří] tells us that while he loves making circuit sculptures like his amazing mechanical tulip, he hates repeating himself. He hopes this bender will make repeat jobs a little less tedious and a lot more precise, and we hope he goes forward with the build so we get to see both it and more of his wonderful works of circuit art.

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Syringe Pump Turns CNC Machine Into A Frosting Bot

June 28, 2019 by 3 Comments

“Amazing how with only the power of 3D-printing, two different computers, hundreds of dollars in CNC machinery, a lathe, and modern microcontroller magic, I can almost decorate a cupcake as well as a hyperactive ten-year-old.”  We can think of no better way to sum up [Justin]’s experiment in CNC frosting application, which turns out to only be a gateway to more interesting use cases down the road.

Granted, it didn’t have to be this hard. [Justin] freely admits that he took the hard road and made parts where off-the-shelf components would have been fine. The design for the syringe pump was downloaded from Thingiverse and does just about what you’d expect – it uses a stepper motor to press down on the plunger of a 20-ml syringe full of frosting. Temporarily attached in place of the spindle on a CNC router, the pump dispenses onto the baked goods of your choice, although with an irregular surface like a muffin top the results are a bit rough. The extruded frosting tends to tear off and drop to the surface of the cake, distorting the design. We’d suggest mapping the Z-height of the cupcake first so the frosting can dispense from a consistent height.

Quality of the results is not really the point, though. As [Justin] teases, this hardware is in support of bioprinting of hydrogels, along with making synthetic opals. We’re looking forward to those projects, but in the meantime, maybe we can all just enjoy a spider silk beer with [Justin].

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Custom Machined Pump Keeps CNC Lubrication Under Control

June 27, 2019 by 19 Comments

Rub two pieces of metal against each other hard enough, and it won’t be long before they heat up sufficiently to cause problems. That’s especially true when one is a workpiece and one is a tool edge, and the problems that arise from failing to manage the heat produced by friction can cost you dearly.

The traditional way of dealing with this is by pumping heavy streams of liquid coolant at the workpiece, but while that works, it creates problems of its own. That’s where minimum quantity lubrication comes in. MQL uses a fine mist of lubricant atomized in a stream of compressed air, which saves on lube and keeps swarf cleaner for easier recycling. The gear needed for MQL can be pricey though, so [brockard] decided to add homebrew MQL to his CNC router, with great results.

The video below shows the whole process, from raw metal to finished system – skip ahead to about 12 minutes if you just want to see final testing, but be warned that you’ll be missing some high-quality machining. The finished pump is a double-piston design, with each side driven by a cam rotated by a servo. An Arduino controls the speed of the motor based on the current settings; the pump is turned on and off through G-code control of a relay.

The lubricant stream is barely visible in the video, as opposed to the sloshing mess of traditional flood coolants, and seems much more suitable for a hobbyist-grade CNC setup. Need to build a CNC router before you build this? You can do much worse than this one.

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The Cheese Grater In Fusion 360

June 25, 2019 by 34 Comments

By now you will all have heard so much about the grille on Apple’s new “Cheese grater” Mac Pro that you might think there was nothing more to say. Before we move on though there’s one final piece of work to bring to your attention, and it comes from [Andy Pugh]. He’s replicated the design in Fusion 360, and used it to produce rather an attractive Raspberry Pi case.

It seems that for Fusion 360 users the problem lies in that package’s method of placing spheres which differs from that of some other CAD software. Using the page linked in our previous coverage of the grille he’s taken its geometry information and produced a video detailing every step in recreating it for Fusion 360. This is where following someone who really knows your CAD package pays dividends, because we suspect it would take us days to figure out some of the tricks he shows us.

The result is the Raspberry Pi case, which is for the Pi 3 and others like it. Sadly we couldn’t break our embargo and tell him about the Pi 4 and its different connector layout, but we’re guessing a halfway competent CAD operator could put together a Pi 4 case. Andy’s files can be found on Thingiverse, so you can all make one for yourselves.

Andy’s appeared here before a few times, not least for his Ner-A-Car motorcycle, and for designing a Robot Wars robot.

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Does The Cheese Grater Do A Great Grate Of Cheese?

June 24, 2019 by 16 Comments

Apple’s newest Mac Pro with its distinctive machined grille continues to excite interest, but until now there has been one question on the lips of nobody. It’s acquired the moniker “Cheese grater”, but can it grate cheese? [Winston Moy] set out to test its effectiveness in the kitchen with a piece of Pecorino Romano, a great cheese.

Of course, the video is not really about cheese grating, but about the machining process to create that distinctive pattern of intersecting spherical holes. He doesn’t have a real Mac Pro because nobody does as yet, so like others his approach was to reverse engineer the manufacturing process. He takes us through the entire thing and the rationale behind his decisions as he makes a 13-hole piece of Mac Pro-like grill from a billet of aluminium. It’s first roughly cut with a pair of decreasing-size end mills, then finished with a ball mill. He’s added an extra cut to round off the sharp edge of the hole that isn’t there on the Mac.

An unexpected problem came when he machined the bottom and the holes began to intersect, it was clear that they were doing so wrongly. Turning the piece over must be done in the correct orientation, one to note for any other would-be cheese-grater manufacturers. Finally the piece is blasted for a satin finish, and then anodised for scratch-resistance.

So, the important question must be answered: does it grate? The answer’s no, the best it can manage is something close to a crumble. He doesn’t seem bothered though, we get the impression he likes eating cheese whatever its form. The whole process is in the video below the break.

For more Apple grille examination, take a look at this mathematical analysis.

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The Process Behind Manufacturing That Mac Pro Grille

June 19, 2019 by 54 Comments

Apple released a monitor stand not so long ago with an eye-watering price tag, and in the resulting fuss you might almost be forgiven for missing the news that they also released a new computer. The distinctive grille on the new Mac Pro caused some interest among Hackaday editors, with speculation rife as to how it had been machined. It seems we’re not alone in this, because [J. Peterson] sent us a link to his own detailed analysis.

The key to the pattern lies in hemispherical holes milled part-way-through a piece of metal on a triangular tessellation, and intersecting with an identical set of holes milled at an offset from the other side. The analysis was done purely from online information as he doesn’t have a real Mac Pro, but using some clever trigonometry he is able to calculate the required offset as well as the hole depth. There are some STL files on Thingiverse, for the curious.

Should you wish to make your own copy of a Mac Pro grille you should therefore be able to use this information in programming a CNC mill to carve it from a piece of alloy plate. The interesting side of it from a manufacturing perspective though is that this is a complex shape that would be difficult to produce in numbers without either CNC or a very specialist one-off machine tool for this single purpose, and neither is a normal expenditure for a mere grille. Perhaps you might come close by rolling alloy plate between rollers whose profile matched the hole pattern, but in that event you would not equal the finish that they have achieved. Apple’s choice to use a relatively time-intensive CNC process in mass-production of a cosmetic part is probably in a large part a quality statement for their particular brand of consumer, but also sets a high bar to any would-be imitators. We applaud it for its engineering, even if we won’t be shelling out for that monitor stand.

Self-Cleaning Camera Lens Makes For Speckle-Free Video

June 13, 2019 by 32 Comments

People making videos about machining have a problem: the coolant gets everywhere. When you take a video to show the process of creating a device, the milky gunk that keeps everything cool gets all over your camera lens. AvE is experimenting with an interesting fix for this problem, with a self-cleaning camera lens. (Video embedded below, some salty language.) His prototype uses a spinning piece of clear PVC mounted on BB gun pellets, driven by compressed air. The camera can see through this spinning piece, but when the coolant hits the spinning piece, it is thrown off.

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