Yep. Exactly.
Someone above suggested the possibility of cutting simple rectangle struts by hand, and marking and drilling them.
Another possibility is community help. I’m sure I or one of the other LowRider owners would be happy to cut some struts for him and at the small size that he’s talking about they should be easy to ship! I’m available.
I bet you’re right Doug, and thanks for the offer. I still have my MPCNC functional actually and it’s working area is 20X40. You’ve got me thinking maybe using it to drill the holes would be the proper way to “full circle” the spirit of these machines. And while I’m at it maybe I can cut a second set of 200mm YZ plates to go with the bags and bags of nuts and bolts I picked up today for LR32.
I think I have a bunch of PETG clear sheet here from Covid days (I think we bought PETG because they were out of acrylic back in those times). I can’t recall how thick it is but it’s easily laterally structural - we used it as barrier “glass” at the tills in the market stands. Is there any reason not to use it for the struts?
Should work just fine…and look cool too.
My LR1 cut the plates for the LR3. I have a connection from my first printer to all of my V1 machines. It has been quite an adventure.
I’ve tried to tell other people about the chain. They glaze over after the 3rd machine.
The PETG sheet is 3.3mm. I feel like that’s plenty since the forces are along the sheet not perpendicular. What thinks thee?
Small build it’ll be fine.
If worst comes to worst… I can make a set of struts for a 20" span pretty quickly.
Got 'em whipped up but man PETG is cracky stuff. And it does look great! You’ll all have to wait until tomorrow for the YouTube post - I decided I’d rather only assemble it “once” but hadn’t printed the hose hangers yet as I was unsure if I’d use the dust collection or not. I’ve decided I’ll give it a try and see what it does for the snow so I loaded up the print bed and they’ll be ready in the morning. It’s the hose that I’m wondering most about but I have some pretty lightweight vac hose from my old dust collection system that might not get too stiff in subzero.
Starting to think about LR32. Likely going to be a pretty hyper fluorescent so it stands out in the snowbank - so I can see from a distance if things appear to be running properly or not. The “dust” collection will play a key role in how “handsfree” it can run.
Some of you may recall one of the biggest struggles I had with the MPCNC was how hard the snow packs into the cut right behind the endmill - so hard that pass two is almost double cutting and quite often caused skips. The solution was to babysit the cuts with airhose in hand and puff the snow out of the cut until the last pass. Pretty tedious. I contemplated an actuator of sorts to do the puffing for me but never pursued it. I may need to bubble that thinking to the top eventually again.
For cutting metal, to keep the chips blown out, it’s common to use an air compressor with a hose and nozzle focused on the cut. This may be what you need here.
Yep, it works very well and is simple to do with basic tools and a good measuring eye!
I had air assist set up on my laser MPCNC and that was a pretty simple setup. I had an inline regulator and dialled the stream of air right down to just what I needed for the assist which wasn’t too terribly much. The challenge with the ice is that it takes quite a blast to clear the snow. My big compressor (which I’ve now sold to make space in the shop for the freezers and ice makers) would have done okay with a stronger steady stream but my little compressor would struggle to keep feeding the cut so I started contemplating some manner of solenoid or actuator to “puff” the blasts at like one per second. Never got farther than the thought though.
Looking into the controller boxes now. When Dan came by we looked at all the angels available and the “right board for the build” in this case landed at the Jackpot because I can use my phone or tablet to manage the machine vs relying on an LCD screen which introduces all the issues of having to somehow heat the enclosure(s) to try to minimize screen latency.
I see Ryan’s “minimal” case for the Jackpot. I’ve also seen the remixes and noted the cooling fans. It occurs to me that this thing is going to be inside a freezer so I don’t think cooling will be much of a concern. Are the boards going to be okay around zero degrees F? I know once the drivers start working they’ll give off some heat but from a cold start will things be ok? I know all my holiday light controllers seem to be fine in zero degrees F and colder and assume the technology is at least related to one another at the very least.
One thing I thought of is the Jackpot’s built in wifi antenna strong enough to penetrate the freezer walls? You might need an ESP32 with an antenna jack that you can run the antenna outside of the freezer.
Yeah, I think so, but quick spray of some conformal coating might be a good idea in case of condensation.
If you buy one from me, drop me a note and I can assemble it and give it a light coating.
All good. The phone will be with me in the freezer in my pocket (with hot pockets elastic banded to it - trade secret, don’t tell anyone I let it slip ; )
But what if I buy two? ; )
If you could coat both of those that would be awesome! Order was just submitted. And thanks!
Today’s learning…must find a supply.
Around here electrical appliances don’t have a fantastically long life, because salt plus humidity does stuff to conductive metal, and makes non conductive bits of dust conductive! TVs for some reason are particularly prone to death by short circuit.
If you don’t have any on hand don’t fret - I can find some up here I’m sure.
Did some figuring about using 2040 extrusion and flat stock connectors to hold things together for me (the need is to have a recess of anywhere from 1.5" - 2" to slide a 2" - 2.5" slab of ice into). Looks fine and everything but also looks like about $150 worth of extrusion and a three to thirty-three week wait from AliExpress when I could achieve the same basic premise before I head to bed tonight with a single sheet of 1/2" MDF, some screws, wood glue and paint to waterproof everything. This thing will sit in the freezer on top of a commercial grade stainless steel work table. And the tolerances for what I’m going to be doing aren’t so critical.
You could check with openbuilds. Ordered some extrusion from them and it arrived quickly and reasonably priced.
