Collaborate Disseminate
Quick, what’s 360 divided by 23? It’s easy enough to get the answer, of course, but if you need to machine a feature every 15.652 degrees around a shaft, how …read more Continue reading Tactical Build Makes Machining Splined Shaft a Snap
One of the original ideas behind the RepRap project was for the machines to create their own upgrades. That philosophy is shining brightly in [Ivan Miranda] CNC milling machine project, …read more Continue reading Upgrade A 3D Printed CNC Milling Machine By Using It
Which to buy first, a lathe or a mill? It’s a tough question for the aspiring home machinist with limited funds to spend on machine tools, but of course the correct answer is a lathe. With a lathe, we are told, all other machine tools can be built, including a …read more
Continue reading Scrapyard Milling Machine Gets Work Done on a Budget
Yes, you can whip up a design for a printed circuit board, send it out to one of the many fab houses, and receive a finished, completed board in a week or two. There are quick-turn assembly houses that will manufacture a circuit board and populate it for you. But …read more
Join us Wednesday at noon Pacific time for the Home Machine Shop Hack Chat!
Even if you haven’t been here for very long, you’ll probably recognize Quinn Dunki as Hackaday’s resident consulting machinist. Quinn recently did a great series of articles on the “King of Machine Tools”, the lathe, covering …read more
Continue reading Hack Chat: The Home Machine Shop with Quinn Dunki
We sometimes wonder if designers ever actually use their own products, or even put them through some sort of human-factors testing before putting them on the market. Consider the mechanism that secures toolholders to the spindle of a milling machine: the drawbar. Some mills require you to lock the spindle with a spanner wrench, loosen the drawbar with another wrench, and catch the released collet and tool with – what exactly?
Unwilling to have the surgical modifications that would qualify him for the Galactic Presidency, [Physics Anonymous] chose instead to modify his mill with a power drawbar. The parts are …read more
Continue reading Air Wrench Becomes a Milling Machine Power Drawbar
Home machinists can often find great deals on used industrial equipment, and many a South Bend lathe or Bridgeport milling machine has followed someone home. Then comes the moment to plug it in, and the new owner discovers that the three-phase plug needed to power the new beast is nowhere to be found in the shop. Thus commences the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.
Luckily, [Handmade Extreme] is ahead of the curve in terms of shop power, and built a rotary phase converter to power his machines. Industry generally runs on three-phase AC systems, mainly because three-phase electric motors …read more
Vibration is a fact of life in almost every machining operation. Whether you’re milling, drilling, turning, or grinding, vibration can result in chatter that can ruin a part. Fighting chatter has generally been a matter of adding more mass to the machine, but if you’re clever about things, chatter reduction can be accomplished electronically, too. (YouTube, embedded below.)
When you know a little something about resonance, machine vibration and chatter start to make sense. [AvE] spends quite a bit of time explaining and demonstrating resonance in the video — fair warning about his usual salty shop language. His goal with …read more
Continue reading Fighting Machine Tool Chatter with a 555 Timer
Every time we look at the little short Z axis of our CNC mill, we think about converting a drill press to a mill. In theory, it seems like it ought to be easy, but we never quite get around to it. [AvE] did get around to it and made his usual entertaining video about it that you can see below. If you haven’t seen any of [AvE’s] videos before, be warned: there is a little colorful language in a spot or two.
This isn’t a CNC mill, by the way, although we suspect you could convert it. Essentially, he …read more
It’s 2017, and getting a PCB professionally made is cheaper and easier than ever. However, unless you’re lucky enough to be in Shenzhen, you might find it difficult to get them quickly, due to the vagaries of international shipping. Whether you want to iterate quickly on designs, or just have the convenience of speed, it can be useful to be able to make your own PCBs at home. [Timo Bernschein] had just such a desire and set about building a PCB mill that doesn’t suck.
It might sound obvious, but it bears thinking about — if you know you’re …read more
Continue reading Home Built PCB Mill Reportedly Doesn’t Suck
