Fixture to zero x,y,z axes of CNC router to workpiece

[mrdovey]

Not sure if this would be useful to people on this forum, but who knows...

A couple of years ago I came up with a fixture that does three jobs:

1) Zero all three axes on my ShopBot to a workpiece corner
2) Report the coordinates of that corner without zeroing
3) With the addition of a reticule, report the location of the crosshair center

It can be adapted easily for use on CNC milling machines.

I have photos at http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/SuperZero/ for anyone who might be interested.

I offer these for sale to fund a solar pump project that you can read about at http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Projects/Stirling/

[CJL5585]

Morris,
I am very interested in your project, as I have been thinking about doing something very similar.

Trough reflector to heat gas or liquids to supply heat for a multi-cylinder stirling engine electrical generator.

Is your reflector stainless steel?

I purchased about eight hundred square feet of reflective mylar a couple of years ago to use as a reflector, but got sidetracked after some surgery.

There are several people on this site who are interested in this type of project. Maybe you should start a thread on your build. I know of one person (Greybeard) who is also working on a solar dish.

Jerry

[mrdovey]

Jerry...

The reflector material I'm working with is a rear-silvered 3/32" polycarbonate available through a local plastics distributor in 48"x96" sheets. If interested, check your phone directory yellow pages for Plastics - Distributors - Sheets.

Call all distributors listed - I found a more than $100 variation in prices locally.

I've heard that Mylar is short-lived, and because I've already had good results in using polycarbonate glazing, I decided to go with that for the reflector.

Since the focal tube of my engine is the hot head, and because I'm trying for the simplest solution possible (hence the fluidyne), I haven't dared to even think about multi-cylinder engines. At this stage I'm struggling to keep the component cost below $200, and I don't think I could do that with a more complex engine.

Most of what I might have to offer gets pushed out to my web site sooner or later so that the handful of folks around the world who're already doing parallel efforts have a common resource.

The parabolic trough, thanks to CNC, turns out to be the easiest part of the project - it's the thermodynamics that's my weak point (although I have finally managed to produce a math/software model that's beginning to act pretty much like the engines themselves). I still have a lot to learn.

...Morris