Happy Monday everyone! Hope all the moms out there had a great day and all the offspring did what they could to ensure that was the case.
I was contemplating things yesterday and had a thought about my freezer issue and think I may have a solution with merit. Read on and feel free to share your thoughts.
What if I were to build an insulated enclosure for the Bumble (much like the laser enclosure I built for the JTech MPCNC) and, using something like dryer vents and a good sized DC fan like from a gaming PC to draw cold air out of the freezer and subsequently back to the freezer via some suitably sized ports which I could cut into the wall of the freezer? I could easily set up temperature control inside this enclosure with a little arduino or ESP (or even a simple thermostat from Home Depot) to control the fan and when not in use I could disconnect the vent hoses and cap off the holes in/out of the main freezer.
This does a few things.
A) It allows Kelly to stay nice and warm while things are running (major plus!)
B) It significantly reduces the degree of cold all of the Bumble bits are exposed to as I can control that temperature more easily (I could even mount the electronics outside of the enclosure)
C) Not that it’s been an issue but it ensures better connectivity via Wifi and actually opens up the option of maybe direct connection or a pendant
D) It means less in and out of the big freezer which even with the vinyl strip curtain covering the door is a big heat dump every time the door opens and closes
I’m sure there are other benefits. Are there any negatives? I would have to find/create a dedicated space for this but I think I can manage that.
What if you just made a insulated bed, and insulated the 4 exposed sides. Just leaving the top exposed. I assume it would stay pretty good if you kept the snow out of the cuts?
Well now we’re literally thinking “out of the box”, thanks for the rethink.
The routers blow some pretty warm air and it blows right onto the ice (in the freezer this warm air has zero impact as it cannot compete with how cold it is in there). If I could redirect the flow of the airflow and minimize or eliminate any drips caused by snow blowing onto the router bodies and melting I could actually run it even on a hot summer day outside as typically the runs “should” be fast and the slabs are so cold when they come out of the freezer they are fine for 10-15 minutes of runtime.
So there - no box required at all and no concerns about the temps on the wiring/electronics.
I’d been planning on removing the dust collection hoops (dust collection doesn’t work on the snow as it tuns out)…I wonder if I could design and print some sort of cover that uses those bottom two screw holes and just cups the bottom of the router, letting the bit poke through. Give it like a martini glass top flare and that should redirect the airflow well enough. With short, low rpm runs I’m not worried about burning up the routers. But I’m sure they’s still be just fine.
In this case (running the slabs at room temperature) it would probably be worse to blow more warm air across the slab. In fact if I could eliminate all airflow entirely it would technically be like those open chest freezers at the grocery store that rely on cold air settling and “filling” the space with cold air.
But there’s no way to eliminate all airflow in my shop with the big condenser fans running every few minutes.
What about compressed air? Suspect it probably wouldn’t be smart to put the compressor in the freezer (!) But compressed air is colder than ambient when released, isn’t it? Or does it just feel like it is
Or liquid cooled spindles but that’s quite some expense…
For snow clearing, I think it’s worth considering that use of something like an air tank (not a compressor) to blow out the snow could be useful.
The air tank can have cold, dry air. It needn’t be too cold, because when you blow it through a nozzle, the pressure (and therefore also temperature) drop can help keep things cool, as well as avoid re-cutting snow chips.
The bonus for me here (for this machine) is that I actually want the snow to remain in the cut. The LR32 is the one that for some operations I’ll need the snow removed but that machine will only ever run one offs - so to speak so I can manually administer the pssst from the air hose. My gaskets/seals on the freezer door are cushy enough that I can leave the compressor outside the freezer and just run the hose in. And yes - that also means the bigger machine WILL run inside the freezer (or on site at winter jobs).
It was a cleanup day today so didn’t play with the Bumble to see what direction the wind blows from the Makitas and where it comes from but the “heat shield” should do the trick I think.
Finally got some great photos of the engraved cubes thanks to the bar manager at an event space where my wares were part of the offering. The morning I engraved them was just cool enough to run Bumble outside of the freezer (still well above freezing but not “instantly melting ice” temps). It definitely appreciates not being at -13F
The weather is starting to turn here so it looks like I’l be getting a chance to play more with these machines out of the freezer. I wanted to quote myself here to bring this to the top (or bottom) of the thread. Someone here said something about a diagnostic type thing that I could run so that when issues arise we can look into the possible causes. I had a few incidents on that most recent engraving run where the LR just stopped. Once about five cubes in, once just three cubes in, once a cube and a half. It’s a common enough occurrence that I makes me question my trust in the machines JUST enough that the thought of engraving jobs coming in makes me a little bit nervous.
Anyone remember who mentioned that to me? In the very near future I’ll be looking for help getting that set up and then see if we can figure out the glitches.
What you want to do is hook up a computer to the Jackpot via USB and run FluidTerm. It will generally show the same output as the WebUI terminal but it includes everything, including details on when it crashes. So, you would leave that running while running a job normally.
. Amazing addition to any occasion.