Roll Your Own DRO With An Added Twist
When using a manual machine tool such as a lathe or milling machine, there can be a lot of pressure to read the position and feed the axes at the …read more Continue reading Roll Your Own DRO With An Added Twist
Category Archives: machine tools
See What You’re In For When Buying And Moving A Lathe
Sometimes, with patience and luck, one can score a sweet deal on machinery. But for tools that weigh many hundreds of pounds? Buying it is only the beginning of the …read more Continue reading See What You’re In For When Buying And Moving A Lathe
(Re)designing The LumenPnP Tape Feeder
Many of the hardware orientated hackers among us will likely have been following along with the story of [Stephen Hawes] and the Lumen pick-and-place project but kind of waiting a …read more Continue reading (Re)designing The LumenPnP Tape Feeder
Angel Investor Gives Open Source PnP A Massive Boost
We love it when an Open Source hardware project grows up and turns into a sustainable business, bootstrapped with nothing but hard work and great ideas, but it’s a really …read more Continue reading Angel Investor Gives Open Source PnP A Massive Boost
Simple Plasma Cutter Collision Detection System
Machine tools often have powerful drive motors, allowing them to work quickly and accurately to get the job done fast. However, this can cause major damage if the tool head collides with an unexpected object. To protect against such occurances, [Xnaron] developed a simple system to shut down his plasma …read more
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No Assembly Required for this Compliant Mechanism Dial Indicator
If you’ve ever had the good fortune — or, after a shop mishap, the misfortune — to see the insides of a dial indicator, you’ll know the workings of these shop essentials resemble nothing so much as those of a fine Swiss watch. The pinions, gears, and springs within transmit …read more
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Open Source Pick and Place Has a $450 BOM Cost
Give your grizzled and cramped hands a break from stuffing boards with surface mount components. This is the job of pick and place machine, and over the years these tools of the trade for Printed Circuit Board Assembly (PCBA) have gotten closer to reality for the home shop; with some …read more
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Screwy Math For Super Fine Adjustments: Differential Screws
For any sort of precision machine, precision adjustability is required. For the hacker this usually involves an adjustment screw, where the accuracy is determined by the thread pitch. This was not good enough for [Mark Rehorst] who wanted adjustment down to 10μm for his 3D printer’s optical end-stop, so …read more
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Motorizing a Plasma Cutter on the Cheap
A hand-held plasma cutter is an excellent tool to have if you are working with sheet metal, but it’s not particularly well suited to making long or repetitive cuts. Which is why [workshop from scratch] worked his usual scrapheap magic and built his own motorized track for making perfectly straight …read more
Scratch Building A Lathe From Pieces Of Granite
As hackers, we’re well accustomed to working with what we have on hand. That’s the name of the game, really. A large majority of the projects that have graced these pages are the direct result of trying to coerce a piece of hardware or software into doing something it was …read more
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