Saturn 2 4x4 - Nema 23

[DDgitfiddle]

Blame accepted where deserved, credit taken where possible.

looks like some nice wood!

[GME]

OK DDgitfiddle, I'm blaming this one you.

Rainy day so I thought I would go check out Goosebay Lumber. What a selection! All in a large wood building with a muddy parking lot.
Just the way I like it. I had to get out of there before I went broke.

I would be interested in opinions on cost. Here is what I bought.

Right to left.
1 - Purple Heart.
2 - Red Heart.
3 - Osage Orange
4 - Ambrosia Maple
5 - Curly Maple
6 - Padauk
7 - Cocobolo
8 - Chakte Viga (big block)
9 - Red Heart
10- Chakte Viga
11- Che Chen
11- Indian Ebony (small turning)
12- Black Palm (Small turning)

Whole lot for $250. So, how did I do cost wise?
Jack.

Wow. What a selection. I have 2 sources for exotics, one in Seattle and one in Port Townsend (a boat building town). Neither has the selection Goosebay has. Neither source for me has Ceylon ebony (aka Indian Ebony). My sources only carry Gabon ebony. Also, they don't carry Red Heart, Osage Orange, Chakte Viga, Che Chen or Black Palm. Still, they have what I want/need, and the prices are okay. For comparison, Purpleheart 4/4 runs $9.13 BF and 8/4 $9.32 BF.

Gary

[PLJack]

Wow. What a selection. I have 2 sources for exotics, one in Seattle and one in Port Townsend (a boat building town). Neither has the selection Goosebay has. Neither source for me has Ceylon ebony (aka Indian Ebony). My sources only carry Gabon ebony. Also, they don't carry Red Heart, Osage Orange, Chakte Viga, Che Chen or Black Palm. Still, they have what I want/need, and the prices are okay. For comparison, Purpleheart 4/4 runs $9.13 BF and 8/4 $9.32 BF.
Gary

That is actually 70 cents less than Goosebay. Good price.
Actually purple heart seems to be a "relatively" inexpensive exotic wood. For what it is.

Jack.

[GME]

Just curious, but did you figure out what was going on with your intermittent stepper driver?

Looking forward to seeing your Yin-Yang pieces with your new wood. Have you found there is a market for them in your area?

Gary

[PLJack]

Just curious, but did you figure out what was going on with your intermittent stepper driver?
Gary

Not yet. The other day I was looking into it but it was such a PITA to get near it (No space to work between it and the wall) I decided to spend the rest of the day moving my controller box and wires from the side of the CNC to the front so I can monitor / work on it.

Looking forward to seeing your Yin-Yang pieces with your new wood.
Gary

Me too.

Have you found there is a market for them in your area?
Gary

Nope. The plan for those is Pinterest / Amazon. That is when I finish the process. At the moment I need to redesign the model.

Jack.

[difalkner]

You sell on Amazon? How's the process for that - costly, difficult, etc.?

David

[PLJack]

You sell on Amazon? How's the process for that - costly, difficult, etc.?
David

Not yet David. Sorry. Still setting up those third party stores. Ponder Labs is old. But until I bought the Saturn it's been consulting and custom software.

Jack.

[difalkner]

Have you looked at selling on Etsy? We're doing that and it seems to be a good and fair platform for both seller and buyer.

David

[PLJack]

Have you looked at selling on Etsy? We're doing that and it seems to be a good and fair platform for both seller and buyer.
David

Good call David. I misspoke. I do have an Etsy account under PLJack. I set it up two years ago when I started thinking about making physical products. Actually before I officially made Ponder Labs an LLC.
Seems it's been a long road. I knew I was doing all this Saturn work for something.
You are not wrong. Etsy is perfect for the stuff I'm stewing on. I'm in the middle of another test with epoxy. Should be done in a couple of days. Will post.

Any advice? Sounds like Etsy its working for you.
How do I find you on Etsy?

Jack.

[difalkner]

It's in my signature - Curly Wood Shop. Well, the name is, anyway. We've shipped 5 times this week and have two more for next week, so far. It's kinda fun, actually.

David

[PLJack]

So, more epoxy testing.
The original idea was to make a skyline of a city, still may, but I went with a mountain silhouette for starters.

The inlay was not part of the plan. I set the Z height at 2mm below the surface instead of .2mm.
The weak clamping failed when the bit plunged in 2mm and sucked up the part. So I had to cover it up with an inlay.


The idea behind the epoxy on the back was to have it act like a light pipe and bring in light from the sides.


This kina worked. I think next time I will make the epoxy on the back thicker and less wide.
Had a hard time making the epoxy on the front translucent. I used a powder colerant, next time I will use a liquid one. The effect only shows with lots of light behind it.


Still. They came out interesting.
In the end I placed suction cups on the back and put them on the kitchen window.





Video here if you care to see all the issues I had. (25min)



Thanks.
Jack.

[wmgeorge]

Jack, I wish I had your creative talent!

[PLJack]

Jack, I wish I had your creative talent!

Thank you sir.
Although lately my creativeness has come from overcoming mistakes. This was supposed to be a weekend project. Took a couple of weeks or so.
I really need to focus on making some clamping jigs. Me thinks I need to get back to basics.
If I was really smart I would throw that controller box on the deck and see what is causing my Y drives to fail every now and again. It must be from the deck moving so much. Loose connection or a short. I'm betting if I did not have the vampire version of those controllers they would have failed by now.

Might just do that. Like I said, back to basics for a bit.

Jack.

[PLJack]

Found the issue with my motor driver failing at will.
At least I stopped it failing, not quite sure why it was happening. It came down to the green connector on the Gecko drive.
This one here:



It had something to do with the connector being the wrong way around. If I reversed the two connectors it would easily fail with the slightest touch and make that nice electric popping sound. Really sounded like a cracked board.
Good news is the drivers seem in fine shape.


Hard to explain but I videoed my testing process if you care to watch. Also I noticed in the video that the X and Y drivers and backwards as well.
Start at 7:18 to see the meat of it. The popping sound can be heard at the beginning of the video.



BTW: Anyone know how to post a video without it embedding? It would be nice if I could just post the link without it placing the video in the thread.

Thanks
Jack.

[mactec54]

Found the issue with my motor driver failing at will.
At least I stopped it failing, not quite sure why it was happening. It came down to the green connector on the Gecko drive.

It had something to do with the connector being the wrong way around. If I reversed the two connectors it would easily fail with the slightest touch and make that nice electric popping sound. Really sounded like a cracked board.
Good news is the drivers seem in fine shape.

[/URL]

I would get a new plug, the end that was arcing will be damaged even though it seems to work the inside contacts will be damaged from the acring

[PLJack]

I would get a new plug, the end that was arcing will be damaged even though it seems to work the inside contacts will be damaged from the acring

Excellent point.
I'll look into finding new connectors.

Thanks.
Jack.

[GME]

Jack,

How strange about the connector. Makes no sense to me that having the connectors switched around would cause connections to become intermittent. Oh well . . . can't argue with the hard evidence. Congratulations getting the problem correctly diagnosed. I'll bet the folks at Gecko will give you new connectors for free.

Gary

[PLJack]

Just doing some quick maintenance. Basically trying to keep the squeaking away.

As I was cleaning I was looking at the wear patterns I thought I would ask opinions.
The wear on the gear retainer shank seems be be the source of the squeaking and grinding I heard early on. Odd because it sits in a brass bushing. The bearing is on the other side of the gear.
A little grease on the bushing seems to fix the squeak but it must be misaligned seeing how the bushing should be sacrificial.


Any comments on the gear and shank wear before I put it back together.

Left Side:





Right side:





Thanks,
Jack.

[wmgeorge]

Just doing some quick maintenance. Basically trying to keep the squeaking away.

As I was cleaning I was looking at the wear patterns I thought I would ask opinions.
The wear on the gear retainer shank seems be be the source of the squeaking and grinding I heard early on. Odd because it sits in a brass bushing. The bearing is on the other side of the gear.
A little grease on the bushing seems to fix the squeak but it must be misaligned seeing how the bushing should be sacrificial.


Any comments on the gear and shank wear before I put it back together.

Left Side:





Right side:





Thanks,
Jack.

I thought it had needle bearings,, not bushings?

[GME]

Just doing some quick maintenance. Basically trying to keep the squeaking away.

As I was cleaning I was looking at the wear patterns I thought I would ask opinions.
The wear on the gear retainer shank seems be be the source of the squeaking and grinding I heard early on. Odd because it sits in a brass bushing. The bearing is on the other side of the gear.
A little grease on the bushing seems to fix the squeak but it must be misaligned seeing how the bushing should be sacrificial.


Any comments on the gear and shank wear before I put it back together.


Thanks,
Jack.

Good evening, Jack. I'll give a shot at some possibilities.

Maybe it could be the amount of tension you have when tightening down the spring-loaded tensioning bolt. If it's too tight, it's going to do more than just pull the gear into the racks. Think about it in the "way out there" extreme - like it would be possible to tighten the tensioning bolt so tightly that you could break off the gear mounting bolt. Before it would break, it would try to bend. Before it would bend, it would bind. Get the idea? If the tension were too tight, it could be setting up a wear inducing bind. Keep in mind that the small gear sit pretty far away from the main body of the drive, relative to everything else. I suppose the gear could be acting like a sort of lever, which could accentuate an already existing bind.

On the Saturn I sent back, the frame tubes were not square. Out-of-square tubes means there is necessarily a disrelation between the mounting plates/drives and the gear racks. If your tubes are also out-of-square, it could account for the wear pattern. It would take what is in the paragraph above and make it worse.

The amount of belt tension may be another cause or an additive cause. If the belt is too tight, it's going to translate to the bushing, etc.

As an aside, I believe oil impregnated bronze bushings (e.g., Oilite) are what is generally used for an application like this, rather than brass. Oilite Plus is an iron-based counterpart. I've never seen brass used, but I don't pretend to have seen it all.

That's it for my input.

Gary