Great first post! Very nice build.
Do you plan to cut strut plates soon ish or are you happy with the interlocking temp struts?
Great first post! Very nice build.
Do you plan to cut strut plates soon ish or are you happy with the interlocking temp struts?
May The Schwartz be with you!
It is better than nothing… It keeps lot of the small airborne pieces in that area until they have time to settle.
I ordered some aluminum plates from a local shop, expecting them to take a while to cut them. In the interim I just decided on using the printed ones
This is a nice shop an so many good ideas. I am considering building an enclosure to house my printer(s), because my wife hates the sound/smell (though I already run the printer with the filter). I’d do it horizontally, but the general idea is the same. ![]()
I did that for dust when I had bedslingers. Then I got rid of them and had enclosed printers.. they needed a home sooooo ![]()
Oh you guys are getting me even more fired up for when I get the keys to my new unit next week. At long last I’ll have room to store all the company gear and have a workshop!!
Bye bye leaky damn shed!
Probably still only the size of an american front room, mind… ![]()
I’m stealing that “F Bomb Test Range” sign
I need several ![]()
End of an era for me…last weekend I finished emptying out my shop of 18 years where I built my first MPCNC:
May 15th 2016 the first MPCNC graduated from my dining room table to the shop - which was also the last time that shop got a full top to bottom cleaning ![]()
It wasn’t until Aug of 2016 that I finally expanded it to it’s intended size, added legs to the table I built for it, and made it a permanent addition:
The rest of 2016 and 217 were full of fun as I learned more and more about it - experimenting with drag knifes (small one for viny, larger one for cardbaord/foam) and developed several iterations of my needle cutter design.
By 2018 I was really having fun with it using it to revive some long stagnant projects like my midibox sequencer (the CNC allowed me to finally make a custom front panel for it.) Experimenting with ways to make cheaper composite materials for custom multirotors (never found anything I was happy with but it was fun to experiment) and using the needle cutter to make more foam planes for myself and friends than I can count.
Unfortunately mid 2018 things came to a crashing halt when my wife passed away unexpectedly - suddenly being a single father of an 8 year old I had precious little time to get out to the shop. It started to collect more and more junk though we did occasionally clear off the MPCNC for school projects and girl scout projects whenever we could find an excuse.
Time passed….
By 2025 I had a new girlfriend and we bought a house in October….I emptied out what I thought was most of the shop leaving just the old MPCNC:
Which had one last job. Cutting strut plates for the new LR4 I started building at the new house to replace it:
The old girl pulled it off…but just barely - had a few crashes and failures but with the last bits of hardboard before I’d have to go buy more I got a usable set of plates!
My now 15 year old daughter helped me build a new bench for the LR4 in our new shop/garage (So excited to have a garage again after 18 years without one!)
And last march it made it’s first crown:
But…emptying out the old shop lingered….We planned on turning the old house into a rental…in fact being able to afford the new house more or less depended on it. But…we got distracted by the new house and then summer hit and working over there in 113f heat just wasn’t in the books. So the old house sat…and lingered.
Until this past Oct when it started to cool off and my daughter and I dug in on finally preparing it for rent. We’ve spent every weekend for the past 5 months deep cleaning, painting every wall and ceiling, tearing up ancient carpet, installing new laminate flooring, and making the old house almost unrecognizable. I gave in and hired someone to clean out the yard…I’d try to keep too much accumulated junk doing it myself. He’s been at it for 2 weeks and is almost done…yes I’m a bit of a packrat but to be fair he’s also working slow and only putting an hour or two a day in ![]()
This week is the city neighborhood cleanup in that area - so I can put anything I want out to the curb and let the city dispose of it…so last weekend we finally tackled what was left in the old shop. And…the attic above it.
Oh boy….there was way more in there than I realized!
The attic had boxes I hadn’t gone through since I moved in back in 2007! All kinds of old computer, photograph, and amateur radio detritus. I saved a few things worth putting on ebay…but most of it found it’s way to the curb even as it hurt my soul.
Even the table from the old MPCNC wound up at the curb:
(And yes, that’s a tektronics scope just sitting at the curb…I had two of them and one was non-functional. Offered it to a few people but no takers and too bulky to ship so it had to go.)
Before I was done hauling it all out neighbors and random pickers were enjoying the bounty so I didn’t get a photo of the final pile…but it was bigger than this.
And so - the old shop is finally empty and I’m almost done with the huge project of preparing the old place to be a rental. Need to finish a few fence repairs and small yard tasks this weekend and then it it will get listed for rent.
Which also means I’m finally going to have time to work on projects in the new shop again. Which is good because the first project is going to be to re-organize it barely a year after moving in because it’s already a cluttered mess and I can’t even use the LR4 right now because the table is covered in tools and things I haven’t found a place for yet from the old shop.
Last project in the new shop was the fire drill dino for my girlfriend (now wife - one other thing last year that delayed some progress but in a good way!) A project which itself has been semi-stalled since August - one of her employees was supposed to mount it for her but it’s still just sitting in their office waiting. So one of the next few weekends I’m going to have to go over there and do it ![]()
Hopefully with the rental reno behind me I’ll be back and doing more fun CNC focused projects this year…and finally settling in to the new shop:
And hopefully it will be looking that organized again soon!
Hell of a journey these little CNC’s have been with you through with you. Feels odd to me some of it feels like yesterday, the rest seems impossibly long ago.