Cool, looking forward to your build. You’ll be amazed at how tightly that box is packed, I sure was.
My wife has asked me what I’m doing spending all my time in the basement. The answer is I’m improving the workshop so I can finish her pantry cabinets I started about a year ago.
Edit to add, look at freecad for CAD/CAM and CNC.js to send the gcode it produces. I have been learning my way through that path because I’m a Linux fan, though I’ll admit I did make a win10 vm and bought estlcam because it’s so popular here.
Thanks Dave, I have Freecad on my list of things to do. Also on that list are Carbide and KIri-Moto (since I have had a great deal of success with Onshape) - but I’m a week or three away from that.
Ahh… so I’ve just earned my “Anniversary” badge on the forum - doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?
Slight progress happening this end… very slight… mostly involving dreaming of things I’ll do with the machine when it’s built, and trying to figure out my software journey. I guess that’s the difference between real life and some youtube channel - in real life we have more than fifteen minutes to finish a project!
And when the first project turns out like you planed it’s all relived in a flash the software and electronics and questions it’s all part of the results
When making some progress is not making any progress at all!
I’ve got the printed parts finished, and I’ve moved all the bits in their boxes to where they will live. That is the good news.
There’s a drawer unit living where the table needs to go, and a drum sander with a perfectly good stand that is taking up space where the drawers could be, so while I’m bolting down the thicknesser, I’ll magically remove the stand and replace it with the drawer.
Then the two TV cupboards are making progress, such progress that I will boldly predict that I might even start on the table later this month.
I did make a brash prediction about Easter… why oh why didn’t I check the calendar first! If Easter was in May I might have a chance.
Because you blokes will be thinking I’m slack. I’ve had the flat bits cut out for a while, with a printed router template stuck on ready to go, but never seemed to get around to ordering a new 6mm trimming bit for the router. Done now, and the pile is complete, just don’t have anything to park it on yet.
Those little dark blotches are where I didn’t sand off the marks left by unsticking the hot glue from the template. We live in a very humid environment, so coating the MDF is a must.
Oh, and if you have been paying attention, the drum sander is now mounted on the drawers, so that’s another job done on the road to actually getting started.
It’s ten weeks that that box from @vicious1 has sat unopened, like some evil temptress, but I continue to avert its gaze and get on with the things that need to be sorted before yet another project begins!
New mounts for the machines and relocation of the drawers to somewhere other than where the LowRider will be have been completed, so I’m going to count that as progress, along with myriad other small jobs that are of no interest at all to this group! (not that moving stuff in my shed is of any interest either, but writing about it makes me feel better about my procrastination),
It won’t happen this month, but I’m hanging out for May now! I submit this photo as evidence!
OK things are now desperate. My absence from these parts can be explained if not forgiven.
May came and went and we spent a good deal of the months in the wilds of Central Australia, well away from the world and thoughts of progressing further.
Then one of us got this bright idea that we should buy a van, and the other of us should immediately convert it to a camper so that we can accompany one of our offspring and her family on a 6,000 k road trip. Four weeks should be heaps to convert a delivery van into a capable camper she said, shouldn’t it?
The one charged with actually doing this work, had hoped to have a CNC machine to do the heavy lifting, but now it looks as though another Christmas will come and go and @vicious1 's package and all the other bits (I think the kit is now complete - even the parts for the table are waiting for assembly) and I still won’t have my Lowrider - or will I?
Anyway, here’s progress on the van - three and a bit weeks in. We’ll rebuild it properly and line it when we get back in mid August. FWIW there are 150 holes in the bed platform alone, and while my heart would really like to have had a machine to do that, there is something terribly therapeutic about mindlessly wielding a big holesaw for an hour or so.
Cheers, and hope to bring progress news on the “real” project next time!
So… I have to ask… Are those brown furry things in the foreground some carnivorous caterpillars or venomous rodents that you keep in your shrubbery to keep out the really dangerous critters?
The really dangerous creature is hiding upstairs, cracking the whip whenever I slack off!
Actually they are the flower of Banksia robur, the Swamp Banksia [Banksia robur - Growing Native Plants] which is a fairly common coastal plant on the East Coast of Australia.
Ah! Even the plants are vicious, knife-wielding drama queens!
As an American, you’ll never convince me that everything in Australia isn’t actively trying to kill me. With the exception of possums. The Australian possum got mixed up with the American possum somewhere in the species delivery backroom. Yours is a cute little fluffball, ours is a mangey half-rat mutant with wiry hair, bad teeth, and a vile disposition.
Isn’t that how Roosevelt and Churchill ended up at lunch with Stalin?
Anyway, I never said ours wasn’t a useful and integral part of the ecosystem (and scarily, part of the culture and cuisine in some parts). Just that, in at least this one shining example, the US does, in fact, outdo the Aussies.
OK, we’re back, having successfully survived travel to the northern most tip of this gentle country.
Now to finish the van and get into the LowRider! (It’s not up to version 4 yet is it?)
It’s been 225 DAYS since my package arrived from @vicious1 and that seems like a long time, but to put that in perspective, I’ve been lugging around the old bits of carport timber to make the base for 25 years!
I have some bits of wood that were left in the shed when I bought the house and moved in. They are unknown hardwood and very large. I am not sure I could do anything besides resaw them into smaller pieces and work with them like that.
the software and electronics and questions it’s all part of the results
