Laser Down

-

I've been keeping myself pretty busy for the last few weeks but unfortunately for you guys my laser cutter has now developed a fault. For a long time now my laser has been playing up, it appears to be a problem with data corruption between my PC and the laser. Files can cut fine one day but download it again and the laser fails (in the on state) and draws a line right across the piece I'm working on.
Well in between those failures the machine has developed a second fault. The insulating shield on the laser tube has now failed. Large sparks were jumping from the tube straight to the laser case. Obviously this is not a good thing and the laser stopped cutting anyway so I investigated and found the smouldering lump of rubber pictured about. I don't know why it did this, but I turned the tube around in an effect to keep running. That worked for a few hours but then it started sparking from the same place.


It's not all bad news HPC were coming down to visit my on Wednesday anyway to help with the first problem, will have to wait and see what they say, until then the laser cutter is out of action. I did manage to get dozens of kits made up in time for my workshop this week, and I have managed to complete all the prototypes for a further 3 projects, but as they're all wedding related you're going to have to wait until the wedding happens before I post those up.


Popular posts from this blog

Wiring the Ruida Controller

-
Image
The RDC6442G controller from Ruida This is going to be quite an image heavy post describing the rewiring needed to convert between the Leetro controller and the Ruida controller. It is also pretty straight forward on the old Just Add Sharks laser cutters because all of the wires are clearly labelled. The controller was prepared in the previous step in order to make this conversion process as smooth as possible. The Leetro (Pad03) panel on the left and the Ruida panel on the right The view from inside the laser looking up at the control panel The control panel is an easy place to start, both panels have just a single cable that runs down to the controller, both panels are a very similar size, with the Ruida panel being slightly smaller underneath so it will fit in the hole left behind easily. The Pad03 panel clips into place so you'll need to reach up inside the machine to work the clips loose. The cable runs down the inside of the laser and is cable tied onto mounti
Read more

Rainbow Puzzle Box

-
Image
This is a binary sequence puzzle box built from 3mm birch plywood, it uses a Gray code pattern to ultimately align all the dials into a rainbow pattern before the lid can be removed. It's actually a redesign of a puzzle inside Loki's box of Tricks  because I thought it would make a cool stand alone puzzle box. The files are available for sale in my Etsy store . ( svg here ) The puzzle consists of five interlocking disks that can only rotate when the disks either side of it are in the correct position to allow it. The large wheel in the middle and the disks on the underside of the lid further restrict the rotation of the disks. The large wheel must be pointed to the disk that is being rotated and the large wheel is in turn restricted from pointing to the smaller disks depending on alignment. Once all the disks are aligned into the full rainbow the large wheel is completely free to rotate and can be turned to the edge of the box and allows the lid to be removed. There is a very
Read more

Laser Cut Cryptex

-
Image
This is my laser cut cryptex. It features 28 different characters and 9 rings, giving a total possible 10.5 Trillion different combinations. I took a bit of time developing the design so that I could add some nice features. This cryptex file is laid out so that you can have any number of rings in your own design. The best feature is that the codeword is changeable, each locking ring has an outer letter ring that can be placed in any one of the 28 different positions. Once the rings are back in place the ring locking bars can added and they prevent the rings from being modified until the box is open again. It's a bit hard to explain so I made a video showing how it all work ( svg here ) It took a long time to assemble this so I lived with my initial design choices but if I were to remake it I would adjust the file to make the ring locking bars out of 6mm ply and maybe put some blind holes onto the code rings to prevent the code being brute forced.
Read more