Grass's pit, a redo

[avlolga]

HitchHikingFlatlander

 

agree, with any compliments you will say for Gadroc.

 

http://www.scsimulations.com by Gadroc and other active members from SCS are more then great guys, this why i am calling them "The Mentors".

 

my way to say thanks to they great work is by applying donation, this way we can keep Gadroc close to us and allow him working on what his enjoy. :thumbup:

with out donation to scsimulations.com and viperpits.org this hobby was difficult to implement.

Avi

[Strix]

Did well with your work whit pit!!

Looks cool and functional.

But you need to something to the ugly copper/brass-pipe on stick, looks awful.... aarrggghhhhhhh...... :cheer3nc: cant stand to see it anymore!!!!!

[Strix]

And u have to make a new landing gear lever!!!! Wood!!!! wtf......

Get a piece of aluminium and redo it or I will hunt u in your dreams!!

Toke a look at how u solve wiring. I must say that's a good idea to use some boards and connectors!

Smart thinking with GPwiz!! Easy on, easy off!!

Will see if I can copy your ideas!! :beer:

[reschke]

Suggest a ping pong ball as the landing gear ball and fill it with the stuff called "Great Stuff" that you can get at Home Depot or Lowes which fills in cracks in walls, etc...

 

It hardens up nicely and you can cut it or stick it on the wood and it will create a nice fit immediately that you can trim off with a razor knife.

[agrasyuk]

thanks for the comments guys.

 

Shouldn't that be "Gadroc" instead of "Gardoc"?

yes, misspelled , sorry. but it really should read something about countermeasures :)

 

Gadroc is the man! His software had totally changed my level of immersion with HELIOS.

...

...

my way to say thanks to they great work is by applying donation, this way we can keep Gadroc close to us and allow him working on what his enjoy.

 

Absolutley.

 

..

But you need to something to the ugly copper/brass-pipe on stick, looks awful.... aarrggghhhhhhh...... :cheer3nc: cant stand to see it anymore!!!! And u have to make a new landing gear lever!!!! Wood!!!! wtf......

yes, 100% agreed on the stick. but i want to do different extension altogether (this time with quick disconnect). i will try to make that look better. i did get to hasty with the wooden handle, need to get it out and re-finish. then you will never know its wood (guess what the UFC enclosure made of :) )

 

Suggest a ping pong ball as the landing gear ball and fill it with the stuff called "Great Stuff" that you can get at Home Depot or Lowes which fills in cracks in walls, etc...It hardens up nicely and you can cut it or stick it on the wood and it will create a nice fit immediately that you can trim off with a razor knife.

 

thanks a lot for the suggestion. i actually working on something based on ... well i will post in case it ends up looking reasonable

Edited March 15, 2012 by agrasyuk

[deaconjb]

Great looking pit! Very nice.

[Kuky]

Good stuff ... you're a real nerd now :D

[agrasyuk]

it was a busy bicycling summer, now that it gets colder i'm slowly geting back into the flying and building.

perhaps ridiculously not of priority but from the moment 0 i was really bothered that my SAS panel switches are not real magnet hold and can't jump to off. i was puzzled to how to accomplish this self hold and then light bulb moment - trigger a relay to make a short in dual pole circuit breaker!

 

and here is my latest ebay catch :) awesome deal , shame the mounting nuts are missing

 

 

to make this reset action happen i am thinking to assign each of the 4 channle toggles to a phidget LED output (in helios of course), solder a simple logic circuit to generate a pulse on high to low transition , and trigger a relay (via transistor cascade) to short out one of the poles of the breakers. those are rated at lowly 1A so there was not to many sparks testing against 20V 2.5A power brick.

 

to bad the EAC is integrated into the throttle...

 

 

ADD:

these are quite whide even when stacked. i don't think they will fit on standard 5.75" panel. so i guess it is a good thing that my opening is bigger then the standard :)

Edited October 27, 2012 by agrasyuk

[agrasyuk]

Several days ago I finally received the cheapo Chinese laser engraver. Came in intact and even seemingly aligned . Whiped the mirrors, connected the water and the exhaust , loaded moshi onto old winxp laptop and gave it a spin. It never stops to amaze me watching a CNC machine executing its program. My first product was a short love note to wifie (as she not all that excited about the expense) on small piece of leftover acrylic. And it would be all good if not for the smell - some of exhaust got blown back into open garage door and some seeped inside... well, lets just say that was a bad way to introduce a tool :)

But bottom line that its here, intact and working. got dryer air vent kit and a bathroom fan and it will have its own exhaust outside.

 

So here I am thinking "ahh, moshi will work just fine" ... well, I guess I'm not any smarter then all. Spent half evening to come up with somewhat OK panel drawing and it is just so awkward to work with this. So the second half I spent researching DSP controllers. Many thanks for the lightobject link Gadroc! Ordered 2 stepper drivers and air assist nozzle from them. Was thinking about getting Z lift table and honeycomb but will wait for now . As for driver itself EDIT: I just won a thunderlaser DSP controller, woohoo!

 

A question to laser operators, how do you focus your device ? Is it the exact mm of lens focus distance that I need to measure between work and lens ? So far it seemed the focus was spot on or close enough right out of the box.

 

ADD: picture

[agrasyuk]

this is so AWESOME!!!!! Laser, yeah!

 

first product is new panel for laser itself. should have done it on white acrylic, but had a piece of clear laying around in almost the exact size. still studying the cad behind this , but so far i'm very happy about precision.

3 layers of flat black, followed by clear-coat after engraving. turned out not to bad, but quite behind Gadrock's level of finish. found out that air assist helps quite a bit - had a brief moment of flame when i turned on the job before opening the air valve

 

 

waiting for mA meter and red button to arive

 

 

 

 

now going to CAD me some real panels :smartass:

Edited November 21, 2012 by agrasyuk

[agrasyuk]

i could not find old enough coreldraw and decided that i'm going to use Autocad, save as 2010 dxf and import that into laserCad. Works pretty ok, although i really need to get my autocad skills up.

designed and cut the first set out. the cutting itself is really quick, under a minute, engraving that little ammount of text took over 15 minutes though. also for some reason the lines that are on engrave layer got skipped. moved the lines to new layer and run the job again. lettering does look like it could be bigger and fatter.

 

I will need to redo it allover again however - as soon as I sprayed the top plate with clear coat it lifted the black paint up! looks like i need to do better surface preparation

 

[BHawthorne]

Why glossy clear coat? Real panels are matte for anti-glare.

Edited November 22, 2012 by BHawthorne

[Gadroc]

I use Coreldraw x5 and Alibre to design panels. I export to dig in both of them to go into lasercad. Direct print form Corel works in x5 and below, but really isn't much better than export to DVD first.

[agrasyuk]

believe it or not it does say clear-matte on the bottle... obviously not matte...

i think i'm going to airbrush it with the same dullcoat i use for modells.

 

ty Gardoc. manual says the plugin is for version X4 or below so i haven't bothered with it. BTW, wanted to ask you, did you manage to evacuate 100% of the fumes? i see the smoke getting sucked out , but even with the noisy 70cfm i still get plenty of smell left.

Edited November 22, 2012 by agrasyuk

[BHawthorne]

I've pondered the china lasers before on ebay. How much is the upgrade to g-code controller if I install it myself?

[Gadroc]

The fan it comes with is a joke, standard bathroom fans will not be enough either. I've upgraded to a 660 cfm fan and it pulls 98% of the fumes out. Also make sure you put the fan as close to the external outlet as possible. You want the majority of the hose under suction not pressure. Leaks under suction will not vent inside. The parts of your exhaust under pressure need to be carefully air tight.

[Gadroc]

I've pondered the china lasers before on ebay. How much is the upgrade to g-code controller if I install it myself?

 

The controller we use is not g-code. It's a dedicated laser controller and upgrading to it is $500-$700 depending on what you may already have. For me the $700 for this laser machine was the same as just buying a tube, power supply and optics. I used it over the last year or so, but finally over the last month rebuilt it from scratch to a machine which can do a 12x24 sheet.

 

G-code based (Mach 3/Linux CNC) work well for cuts only and are not good for engraving. You'll also be dedicating nearly as much value in computer hardware to make it run.

[agrasyuk]

I've pondered the china lasers before on ebay. How much is the upgrade to g-code controller if I install it myself?

 

Yep, as gadroc said the controler is a bit different . g-code solution is actually cheaper, you can get a break out board and 3 stepper drivers for 100$ or so + 150 for Mach3 software. But from what I gathered (I'm not CAM pro) the actual work to program everything is more complicated . DSP Contoroler is more expensive , but I don't need to mess with g-codes. The chineese laser is a very good value, a platform to start upgrading. Now after playing with this oneI definetly can see value in more expencive machines, but I don't have that much to spend :)

 

Gadroc 660 cfm ? Geez, did you get a vacuum cleaner? Or is it a turbine :) care to showcase pic of your laser setup? From what I remember you eliminated the internal ventilation duct...

Edited November 23, 2012 by agrasyuk

[BHawthorne]

Gadroc 660 cfm ? Geez, did you get a vacuum cleaner? Or is it a turbine :) care to showcase pic of your laser setup? From what I remember you eliminated the internal ventilation duct...

 

660cfm? I wonder if he meant 66.0cfm? I have a Delta 120mm 220cfm fan that sounds like a jet taking off.

[Gadroc]

Nope, I meant 660 cfm. I would not be cutting acrylic with less than a 300-400 cfm fan vented outside, those fumes are nasty.

[BHawthorne]

Wow, that's a lot of air suction. Thanks for the link. I was wanting to get one of those for my grinding table in my machine shop.

[agrasyuk]

Seems like you upgraded gardoc. I remember you had the small K40 laser. Regardless, I will need to up the airflow I guess.

[Gadroc]

Yes, upgraded over the last few weeks. Built the new one from scratch reusing the optics, laser tube and electronics from the K40.

[agrasyuk]

really wish i had more time to work on this, but i'll take what i can :)

here is my first laser cut panel. Back-lit with 20 3mm wide angle green LEDS. connected into strings of 4 and plugged to old PC PSU that will serv as backlight supply for the entire pit. i still need to insulate the TO trim indicator well so it doesn't bleed light there.

 

Edited December 15, 2012 by agrasyuk

[agrasyuk]

the SAS device is assembled , and tested working. using Arduino UNO

1 Analog - Yaw trim

1 input - TO Trim Button

2 inputs - monitor L/R

4 inputs - airpax 1A circuit breakers

-------------------------

1 Digital OUT - takeoff trim indicator

4 Digital outputs - SC trip. Applying high current from standalone power unit to circuitbreakers via Darlington transistor cascade. tested working :)

 

 

takeoff trim indicator insulated, minimal light bleed

 

 

Old Vs New (Dedicated back-lighting PSU on background)

 

Edited December 17, 2012 by agrasyuk