Flat rate means anything that fits in the box is the same price to ship. It is more expensive for USPS to think about how to handle something smaller than just shipping a bazillion flat rate boxes.
The rate for flat rate shipping is higher depending on where it ships. So it definitely costs more to ship to CA.
i have heard they are losing because of all the free boxes people are grabbing and not using to mail things through USPS though!
Seriously?! Up here the flat rate boxes and the shipping are paid BEFORE you get your box.
You can do that here as well, but those a bit more expensive. you used to be able to buy those before a price increase to save a bit on shipping. The nice thing about flat rate is you can ship up to 70lbs in one of those that would be like $150 normally, in the US that is just $18. During peak covid the mail carrier was very mad at all the kettle bells that were being shipped.
(/long_break)
So here it is the first day of fall and I’ve yet to freeze down the Bumble but I’m hoping it’s close.
We had a super hot August here and these machines (referring to the refrigeration machines) don’t love working too much when it gets that hot. Since the electrician friend of mine was helping me out as a favour I thought I’d just leave things be until it cooled off again a bit. And so here I am.
The electrical work was finished up only to find freezer attempt #2 didn’t want to fire up for us. The guys I bought it from came by to check it out and they figure the refrigerant must have leaked out. They say they’ll be back early this week to charge up the system and then I should be good to go. My fingers are crossed…this expensive little venture of mine has had nothing but delay after delay after delay. Looking forward to moving forward again.
WOW, Kelly!! Absolutely stunning work!
A few Q’s, (I’m sure they’ve been answered and are buried in the thread, so I apologize in advance.)
What material did you use for the prints?
The MDF is 1/2"?
What is the usable area?
Can you explain the intended purpose of the dual cores, Is it just to reduce tool swapping?
Truly inspirational work! thank you for sharing.
I printed it all in PLA (Silk). “Kexcelled” from Amazon. I used 1/2" MDF becasue I trusted I’d get some rigidity from the semi-box construction. It feels pretty solid to me - I’ve moved it from the work table to the tablesaw and back a few times. It’s HEAVY. But the weight is mostly due to the dual routers.
The machine will be single purpose. I’ll insert 20" long x 10" wide slabs of ice and engrave “your logo” into the surface in a grid of repeating 2.5" x 2.5" squares. So in the 20X0 I should have 32 engravings. The second core is just to cut the work time in half so it’ll engrave two at a time. That’s the plan anyway.
Then, once engraved, I’ll cut the slab of ice into 32, 2.5" x 2.5" ice cubes for you to enjoy your next beverage “branded” with your logo. Fun hey?
Brilliant! I’m sure I’m not alone when I say I’d love to see a video of it churning out cubes
That’s so … COOL! (See what I did there?) LOL
No.
Can you spell it out for me… 
Ice, ice, baby.
Well, it’s almost time so it’s a good time to realize I have yet to order the 1/8 collets and single flutes for the machine. Thankfully the V1E store is open 24/7! hahahaha
I’ll try to have the machine ready to throw into subzero (-13F) by the time the mail arrives. Once its cold there’s nothing left to do but see what happens! So, so close…
Finally some more ice carving!
Squaring question.
I missed the mail carrier today so will pick up my bits and bobbles tomorrow but in the meantime have been finishing getting the machine ready for the freezer.
I found this post and YouTube video and it all made sense to me but when I made my measurements I was off by a pretty good deal - 18mm or so. I tried the “easy way” in the configs but once I got over 12mm of pulloff for Y2 things didn’t look so good on the machine. I guess I better do this the proper way. Question is, what is the proper way? Is it the rail that needs to be squared up better?
Yes. That is to say, one or both the end stops needs moved. There is a little screw hole on each end stop, and for small (fine) adjustments, it’s possible to sink a screw there either deeper or shallower. But for major offness, probably better to move the whole tensioner.
However… To be that far off, makes me wonder if you have a loose grub screw!
Once you mount the rail, that is the source of truth. I have a larger framing square I can put on my rail and project a line. That makes it super easy to make both Y hard stops equally square to the rail.
18mm is far far to much. You should be under 2mm difference. 4 at the very most.
Ha! Are you, how do they say…“taking the piss?” (To any new to this thread see way above re: loose grub screws). Hahahaa
My diagonals were 431mm and 441mm. Using the method in the YouTube video I was looking to be around 18mm to compensate. What I noticed at 12mm pulloff was that the machine seemed to twist and strain against itself and the rail trying to hold Y1 in place but force Y2 to pull off enough.
Thinking through this a little more as I was waking back to the day - is there a way to loosen and resquare the gantry itself in addition to the adjustment to the rail and end stop or is the gantry pretty solid and any squareness comes from the rail?
The compensation sis always less than the difference. So in this case you were about 10mm different, 5mm might fix it.
Either way, you need to sort of take a step back and look at the bigger picture those numbers are huge way to far off for something else not to be really far off.
Is the rails square on the table,
are the Y end blocks square and equal to the rail,
is the machine itself fairly square (you can get an idea with an actual square).
Sorry if I missed to connect this with previous discussion. I should have read/reread more before chiming in.
One can unintentionally build the X gantry out of square on its ends, but Ryan has designed the system such that if your end braces are not right it should be hard to have done it, and easy to notice that it was done. Having end stops not be square to each other is a far more likely cause, although if, on the X gantry, the end brace — that’s on the rail side — was installed crooked, it can definitely create issues of machine being out of square.
What is the distance between your Y belts again? Given those diagonals, I can get you the exact offset, I think.