Automatic Dust Collection For The Whole Shop

January 5, 2018 by Tom Nardi 19 Comments

If you’ve got a woodworking area, or even if you’ve just got something that really churns out dust like a belt sander or table saw, there’s an excellent chance you hate sawdust with a passion. It gets all over your clothes, jams up everything mechanical, and as a fun little bonus can be explosive if not handled properly. Thankfully newer tools tend to come with their own dust collection bags (back in the old days, you weren’t really a man unless you were coughing up wood fibers), but if you’ve got a half a dozen tools with half a dozen different dust bags you’ve got to empty, that can get pretty annoying.

Especially if you take woodworking as seriously as [Brad Wright] does. Over on his YouTube channel [DIY Builds], he quickly runs through the construction of a whole-shop dust collection system with some very neat features. Not everyone needs a system this intricate, but the tips and tricks he shows off during the build are great and can certainly be adapted to less grandiose setups.

Dust collection connector with closeable gate — One of the scratch-built gates.

[Brad] goes into a bit more detail in this gallery, revealing that the heart of the build is a Harbor Freight dust collection system that he modified into a cyclone separator. Big chunks fall down into the 55 gallon bucket, and what’s left gets blown out of the shop via a louvered vent through an exterior wall. An intricate system of 4 inch PVC pipe is then used to connect up each individual machine’s dust collection port. Even individual hand sanders get into the act via a three way manifold. His table saw lacked a dust port, so he enclosed the motor with a piece of plywood and made his own.

One of the most interesting aspects of the build is the scratch-built blast gates. These are essentially valves which open and close the different sections of the PVC where they mate to the individual stations. This prevents the dust collection system from wasting suction by trying to pull from all the stations at once when only one is in use at any given time. [Brad] even wired up the blast gates with switches that will turn the dust collection system on when the gate is open, and off when it’s closed.

This isn’t the first time we’ve covered the lengths people will go to rid their shop of dust. Cyclone dust separators are an especially popular build, using everything from sheet metal to 3D printed parts.

Continue reading “Automatic Dust Collection For The Whole Shop” →

Drill Press To Mill Conversion

July 4, 2017 by Al Williams 38 Comments

Every time we look at the little short Z axis of our CNC mill, we think about converting a drill press to a mill. In theory, it seems like it ought to be easy, but we never quite get around to it. [AvE] did get around to it and made his usual entertaining video about it that you can see below. If you haven’t seen any of [AvE’s] videos before, be warned: there is a little colorful language in a spot or two.

This isn’t a CNC mill, by the way, although we suspect you could convert it. Essentially, he adds a spindle and an XY table to a Ryobi drill press. It sounds simple, but getting everything to work did take a few tricks, including a blow torch.

Actually, turns out the blow torch didn’t really do it, but we won’t spoil the final resolution to the problem. Once it was resolved, though, he did manage to do some actual milling, accompanied by some music we wouldn’t associate with [AvE].

Although billed as a “poor man’s” build, the XY table alone was about $200. So add in the cost of the drill press, the spindle, and the mill and this is still a fair chunk of cash. We’d love to see it compared to a Harbor Freight milling vise. We suspect the Harbor Freight vise might not be as good, but is the difference worth the $130 difference in price?

We’ve seen this kind of conversion done before without the colorful language. If you do this conversion and want some practice, why not build a magnetic carabiner?

Metalworking Hacks Add Functionality To Snap-On Tool Chest

February 9, 2017 by Dan Maloney 28 Comments

Problem: you’re a student mechanic and you’ve already poured a ton of money into a Snap-On roller cabinet loaded with the tools of the trade, but you still need sensible storage for your cordless tools. Solution: a DIY version of Snap-On’s PowerCab cordless tool station at a fraction of the cost.

Mechanics seem to have a love-hate relationship with Snap-On tools. Some love the brand, others hate it, but the majority seem to hate that they love the tools. It sounds like [GenTQ] reached her limit on brand loyalty when even her 50% student discount wasn’t enough to entice her to add Snap-On’s admittedly very cool KRL1099 cabinet for cordless drivers and chargers. So it was off to Harbor Freight for their seven-drawer side cabinet for less than $200. The cabinet was gutted of drawers, a frame for the new slide-out was welded up, and sheet steel was fabricated into organizer shelves and a new drawer front. A power strip and drag-chain were added to feed the chargers, and the new drawer went off to the powder coater for a matching paint job.

It may not have the Snap-On badge, and purists may cringe at the mixed-marriage with Horror Fright, but we like the results just fine. And she saved something like $1200 in the process. We think Harbor Freight gets a bad rap, deservedly so for some tools, but there are hidden gems amid the dross just ripe for the hacking, as [GenTQ] ably shows.

[via r/DIY]

Cheap Chainsaw Teardown Reveals Buried Treasures

December 17, 2016 by Dan Maloney 102 Comments

People seem to have a love-hate relationship with Harbor Freight, and it mostly seems that they love to hate the purveyor of discount tools. This is not without cause — any number of HF tools have fallen apart in our hands. But there are some gems to be found amid the dregs and dross of your local branch of the 700-store US chain, as long as you match the tool to your needs and manage your expectations.

Now, we’d normally shy away from any electric chainsaw, especially a cordless saw, and doubly so a Harbor Freight special. But as [Professor Charles] demonstrates with his detailed and humorous teardown, the Lynxx 40-volt cordless 14″ chainsaw might be worth picking up just for harvesting parts. First there’s the battery pack, which is chock full of 18650 lithium cells. [Professor Charles] leads us on a detailed tour of the design compromises of the battery and charger and is none too impressed with either, but he clearly understands what it means to build to a price point. While [Charles] found the stock motor controller somewhat anemic, the real buried treasure in the tool is a huge brushless motor, powerful enough to “throw an 8-inch Vise Grip at you” during a (not so) locked rotor test.

The whole teardown is enlightening as to the engineering decisions that go into mass-market tools, so even if you can’t think of something to do with this motor, the article is worth a read. At $169 for the Lynxx (before the 20% coupon in your Sunday paper every week) it’s a little pricey to buy just to harvest parts, but it wouldn’t be the first HF tool to suffer that fate. We’ll bet these things will start showing up broken on the secondary market for a song, and if the [Professor]’s assessments are right, it likely won’t be the motors that fail.

Bubble Free Resin Casting With A Modified Paint Tank

February 5, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 19 Comments

[thelostspore] was experimenting with resin casting, and discovered that he needed a pressure casting chamber in order to get clear casts. There are commercial solutions for sale, and they are really nice. However, many hackers are on a budget, and if you’re only casting every now and then you don’t need such a fancy set-up.

Re-purposing equipment like this is pretty common in the replica prop making community. Professional painters use a pressurized pot filled with paint to deliver to their spray guns. These pots can take 60-80 PSI and are built to live on a job site. By re-arranging some of the parts you can easily get a chamber that can hold 60 PSI for enough hours to successfully cast a part. Many import stores sell a cheap version, usually a bit smaller and with a sub-par gasket for around 80 US Dollars. [thelostspore] purchased one of these, removed the feed tube from lid and plugged the outlet. He then attached a quick release fitting to the inlet of the regulator.

We used this guide to build our own pressure casting set-up. Rather than plug up the outlet on ours, we put a ball valve with a muffler in its place to quickly and safely vent the chamber when the casting has set. We recommend putting a female quick connect coupling or another ball valve in combination with the male fitting (if your hose end is female). It is not super dangerous to do it the way the guide recommends, but this is safer, and you can disconnect the compressor from the tank without losing pressure.

All that was left was to test it. He poured an identical mold and it came out clear!

Add Speed Control To A DIY CNC Machine

February 12, 2013 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

adding-speed-control-to-diy-cnc

[Jesse Merritt] bought a manual speed controller for his router. It’s used in the CNC mill he build and he figured, why not add the ability for the computer to control the speed.

The speed controller is a $20 unit from Harbor Freight. It comes with an On/Off switch and knob which adjusts the power going to the router. [Jesse] pulled off the knob and milled a gear which takes its place. The second gear is attached to the horn of a hobby servo mounted on the side of the speed controller. The video after the break demonstrates an Arduino driving the servo based on a potentiometer input as well as commands from the CNC controller board he’s using.

Design files for the gears and the Arduino code which drives the servo is available from his Github repository.

Continue reading “Add Speed Control To A DIY CNC Machine” →

Color-matching Powder Coat Paints

April 26, 2011 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

[Zitt] is sharing some methods he’s honed for color-matching powder coat paint. He developed these techniques while restoring a 1982 Star Trek coin-op machine. The image above shows a paddle used for the game. The plate that houses the control was beat up, and he needed to repaint it but wanted to make sure it didn’t look out-of-place with the molded plastic that surrounds it.

He gets his powder paints from Harbor Freight, a favorite depot for hackable goods (like drill motors, or metal carts). Usually these paints would be applied by attracting them to the piece using electrostatic charges. [Zitt’s] not doing that, but applying them with a paint sprayer instead.

The first step is to match your color. He’s using an electronic color matching device which gives data to plug into a chart on the web for a color match. Once you’ve got a formula, mix up the powder coat, and then dissolve it into some Methyl Ethyl Ketone. This goes into the spray gun and is applied in an even coat. Before heading into an oven for curing, it’s important to wait for this coat to dry. [Zitt] observed some boiling MEK on a wet test piece that left an undesirable texture on the baked paint after curing. After running a few test pieces he picked the blend that was the best match and then painted all of his restored parts.