Hempstead

I still have them in stock and will make more if necessary (current number of stock is in the 70s... I went hog wild making them one weekend ;-). So, if you wish to buy some, send me a PM. Although the mailing and material costs have gone up quite a bit since I started making them. I am too lazy to raise the price. I am fine with not losing money on it. So, they are still USD $8 apiece.

I do use a CNC to do PCBs for the Cougar DiH hall sensor. It's a SOIC 8 chip. Works just fine. 10 mil trace, no problem. However, I have to tell you that for finer pitch... tough... It wouldn't be easy to do 0.5mm pitch for, say, Atmel SAM4S with LQFP 0.5mm (not impossible). And the flatness of your table and fixing of the PCB has to be absolutely flat that it's not easy for large format. A vacuum table would be great, but for small PCBs, I mill some aluminum hold down for them (just a flat plate of aluminum with a rectangular windows on it and another milled flat backing plate to clamp the PCB flat). And obviously, your machine be better trammed perfectly... or you will end up one side cut too deep, one side no cut at all. This is mainly why larger PCBs are very difficult. Professional PCB milling machines solve this problem by using depth sensor, which you would not have with a regular CNC mill/router. Also, your machine backlash better be tightly controlled. See, if your machine's backlash is 5 mil and your trace width is 5 mil... you might end up with no trace at some places. A tip for after milling the PCB... you will end up with some copper burrs that you need to clean up. I find that using a fine grit Japanese water stone for knife sharpening works perfectly. Wet the stone with some water, press the copper side down, run a couple of passes and all the burrs are gone. A good blast of compressed air.... and you are good for soldering. Also, if you use Windows EagleCAD's PCB2GCode to generate the GCode and your mill is using Linux EMC... you'd need to run dos2unix on the generated GCode to translate the Windoze CRNL to NL, otherwise Linux EMC will err out and spit out some weird/confusing error messages.

I bought my laser cutter specifically for engraving panels. But then came to use it for making the PTFE rings for Warthog. What I find it most useful is to cut templates.... No more going to my drafting table then jig saw the templates very carefully, then sand them to size! Draw the design in CAD, laser cut whatever template I need on a thin sheet of plywood, then plasma cut made easy!!! No more wiggly cuts due to trembling hand or sneezing! I also use it to cut and actually pocket (rough multi-pass engraving) the Hall Sensor base I am making. I used to make this w/ a 3d printer, but found the el'cheapo 3d printer I have very temperamental and unreliable. Well, instead of silk screening, you can laser engrave rubber stamps for lettering on curved surface, cut complex masking for spray painting/decal.... numerous uses! If you ain't got a hammer, nothing looks like a nail!

I have tried all 3. Silk screening, unless you have large quantity and some good and expensive machines, it ain't worth the trouble. The art supply store sold light sensitive stuff isn't exactly designed for precision. So it requires some trial and error experiments.... Not exactly time saving for one off or small quantity. CNC engraving is quite tricky to get right unless you just want stick fonts. If you are getting plastic melting, like WarHog says, get some good quality carbide V cutters, and try to rig up a flood coolant system. My first attempt in engraving polycarbonate lasted 3 seconds and cost $20 without flood coolant. Even with flood coolant, getting very fine details is quite a challenge/black art. I find laser is the easiest to produce one off or small quantity, reasonably detailed panels. I use laser to engrave the panel face, then CNC mill the cut out and outline (laser cutting thick panels produces slanted edges and you can't really do pockets). Unfortunately most routers are quite difficult to rig up a flood coolant system due to their design of having stepper/servos pulley, belts/ACME screws on the bottom. Bigger machines suitable for flood coolant system is a bear to rig up. I actually build a 4'x6'x8' enclosure for my RF-45 (yes, you read that right, foot, not inch) and then rig up a 50 gallon fish tank for the coolant. If you have the $$$ check out Tormach. But, be forewarned, real CNC is a long learning process.

http://www.amazon.com/Gardena-39035-8-Inch-Garden-Connector/dp/B002VED3KW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400613035&sr=8-1&keywords=39035

Agreed. The 4 holes and the 4 poles on the spring platform is mainly the cause of sticktion & center play. These 4 holes are slightly tapered to prevent lock up against the 4 poles. The taper is needed to increase the contact area between the holes and the poles, but at the price of center play. I actually CNC milled a solid block of 6061-T6 aluminum and precision reamed the hole to 5.01 mm diameter (the poles are 5mm diameter) making a new spring platform in an attempt to eliminate the center play. That was a beautifully machined part, but a spectacular failure nonetheless. Because, sure, there is absolutely no center play I can detect anymore, but it completely binds the 4x poles! This, of course, is an extreme case of indication where the sticktion is coming from, i.e. I proved that I can increase the sticktion to 100% binding the poles so the Warthog stick won't move at all. However, the ring does contribute a very small portion of the sticktion... but it's so small that I must tell you that the PTFE ring will NOT improve the sticktion situation.

No big hurry, guys/gals... even after the recent in rush of orders, I still have 8x PTFE in stock. And I have already ordered another new batch of raw PTFE sheet enough to make another 36x rings. I will be around to provide this service, unless someone else wants to take over the service or start a business. It seems that GoogleMail recently changed it's SPAM filter policies so that I had to fish out a couple of your emails out of the SPAM folder. It's not as convenient and fool-proof as getting a ding on my cell phone as soon as the mails are delivered. If I don't respond to your PMs or emails within 24 hours, please send the PM/email again (I might have missed it among the vast number of "enlargement... SPAMs" in the SPAM folder. ;-) And, perhaps check your SPAM folder too?

Here's the specification. If you wish to make it in small or large quantity. You are most welcome to make it yourself and sell it too. The outside diameter is 64mm, inside is 59.5mm nominal. Thickness is 1/8" (3.175mm or about 3mm). The material is PTFE (Teflon) sheet. Nylon sheet should do just fine, except that Nylon is not as slick as PTFE so you must grease the hell out of it. With PTFE, technically speaking you don't even need to grease it, but I would still advise greasing it just in case. Why not, right? If you do start making it and selling it commercially, please drop me a note so I can stop making it and refer the business to you. I will be glad to get out of it. Correction ----------- The spec. Should be OD = 64mm, ID=54mm, thickness=1/8".

#Pand, Please check your PM. Apparently, I would get an email when somebody PM me on the ED forum. So, if you wish to purchase PTFE O-rings, please PM me on ED forum. I still have 16x in stock. Like I said, I do this as a service to fellow Warthog owners, and it's currently laser CNC cut, so I can make as many, or as few as there is stock PTFE sheet I can purchase at reasonable price. Please note that, since it's cut out of solid 1/8" thick PTFE sheets and you can flip around and use the other side, you really don't need to buy a lot. I have never received a failure report. Please limit your purchase to 2x rings per Warthog so we can serve more fellow Warthog owners. Thanks!

I simply take a long 1/2" D stainless steel rod and put it in front of the two rear legs of the table, then wedge the rudder against the rod. Works like a charm, and the position of the rudder is just right too.

I have been making solid PTFE (Teflon) rings for this since 3 or 4 months after Warthog came out, now CO2 laser cut. You just take the old ring out, wipe the residue glue clean, put the new PTFE ring in, grease up, reassemble, and go. Since it's cut out of a solid PTFE sheet (1/8" thick), it's stiff enough to wedge itself in place without any glue, and you can flip around and use the other side too. I only sell it on the Warthog World forum as a service to fellow Warthog owners who run into the same trouble w/ the ring. I must have sent out at least 40 or 50 of them worldwide for the last 2 1/2 years. No failure of the PTFE ring reported yet. Since my goal is not to make money out of this, I charge only USD $8 apiece, S/H included w/ USPS first class mail. Priority mail would have cost an additional $20 per shipment.... not worth it. Since I don't have a desire to turn myself into a minimum wage worker, I don't really feel like "advertising" it. But seeing people here resorting to super glue... My heart ache for you. If you have a need of it, send me a PM on Warthog World (the site is currently down though). Try your luck w/ PM on this forum if you want. But since I rarely read this forum, your mileage may vary...