MSRaynsford

At the peak of kickstarter fulfilment I had up to 100 puzzles produced in stock waiting to be packed. with four different colours and 8 different puzzles, trying to keep track of the 32 different varieties was very tricky. I created these dividers to help me stack the puzzles and up minimize their footprint. I was also able to lay out the dividers so that they overlap each other and I could get as many as possible onto a single sheet. One pair of dividers could provide the first and third separators and the mirror image provides the second and fourth.

The remote control strandbeest have been available in the webstore for some time now, I had them on display at Maker Central and at one point I dropped one onto the floor to try and catch up with Matt Denton . It was was close but ultimately just too slow to make any sensible progress so I thought it would be a fun project to beef up the drive motors and make a one off machine that moves at a sensible pace. I had a suitable motor driver chip  that interfaces neatly with the wemos D1 controller I'm using, it's able to output an amp to drive some sensible sized motors. I found some 1000 rpm motors  that fit neatly inside the space available, wired them all up and adjusted the code to use the motor driver chip instead of the servo motors. The trouble is that the motors run too fast, the joints on the legs of the plastic kit shake themselves loose as it moves. It probably moved about 50% faster than the servo version but it still doesn't feel fast enough. I need to figur...

I feel like I should preface this article with a mention that I had a natural bias towards height tools despite never using a machine with a touch probe. I personally prefer machines without attachments on the cutting heads because they can move faster. Now I have two machines with the two different focusing mechanisms I'm finally able to write this article from a factual viewpoint. Why the laser needs focusing The beam that comes out of the end of the laser tube is actually quite wide, my 100W tube can make a spot size 5-10mm across if I shoot it directly at a piece of material. This beam wouldn't be very effective at cutting material so it needs to be focused down to a small spot. This increases the intensity of the beam at that exact location and allows it to vaporise the material as it traces out the shape of your work. There is a lens in the cutting head of the laser that focuses the wide beam of the laser into a single spot point on the surface of the materia...

I have finally finished my Kickstarter Fulfilment, it wasn't any harder or slower than predicted but like most long projects it always feels like it drags a little bit in the middle. 1000 puzzles shipped to 200 customers in the last 6 weeks, it's been fairly hectic. I've had quite a few compliments about the quality and difficulty which is always nice. I now have a bit of time to complete some of my smaller orders while I prepare the next kickstarter for launch. Hopefully I'll get that up and running within the month.