Saturday at 10Bit

[Don Smeller]

There’s a lot going on in this first picture, so look close.

Henry (1) is a kid with a kit.  He goes to Burbank H.S. “I can’t get it to run.”  Programmer John(2) volunteered to sit with Henry and work out the problems.  Sue (3)(her day job is parking satellites in orbit) had just left the pictured tableau having spotted the last issue, something to do with the power supply not making contact. “Is it plugged in? Duh.”  So now it runs and the guys are seeing it, for the first time, make those goofy-delta-printer-motions  (click link for YouTube video). 

In the foreground we see a blurry Ken(4) finger pointing at a laptop.  Ken is telling us about investing in a kick-starter called Slash-3D  (click link for YouTube video)  It’s a resin bath 3D Printer with UV light cure.  If it lives up to the hype, it going to be amazingly fast and able to make the smallest details.

This past week Don(5) and James(6) switched nights.  So Don is the Tuesday guy and James Thursday.  I intend to get back into the 3D-Tuesday groove.  But not so much to do with 3D Printing but rather with different, new-to-me, 3D toys: the CNC Mill and the Kinect.

CNC Mill a.k.a. DynaMyte

Ray gave me the nickel tour of the CNC Mill.  It works, but It needs some lovin’. It was old (1970’s? 80’s? Vintage) but sturdy, so it got resuscitated and renovated a year ago. New circuits were installed and it was made to run using today’s flavor of g-code. The controls are no longer a box of buttons to push but rather an app on a dedicated computer screen.  I bought a set of T-nuts and hold down clamps this week to work within the T-slots of the bed. The picture shows the pencilled limits of the milling area: X: Side-to-side. It can machine 6.4 inches wide.  Y: Fore-and-Aft. It can machine 5.25 inches.  The Y dimension can be doubled by turning the work-piece180 degrees and re-clamping.

 

The Open Source people have made available a free software package called CAMotics.  Download it.  Mac & PC.   Let’s learn it together on Tuesdays and figure out how to make things like this:

Kinect

Also on Saturday, really late, we (Ken mainly) got the Kinect running.  It resides on the computer that sits beside the big laser.  A Kinect ordinarily is hitched up to an XBOX game system, but it can be repurposed to look at any object and scan its surface and return a 3D file which, then, can be used for 3D printing.  James bought a used Kinect at a pawn shop. (When a person needs money, he pawns his expensive toys, right?)    The software that makes it work is called Reconstructme  (click link for YouTube video)  The software is free but it needs a powerful up-to-date PC (not a MAC) computer. 64bit is best. The golden boy is me after 20 seconds of slowly rotating in a swivel chair in front of the Kinect.  This was our first attempt, ragged, flat top, monochrome. It can only get better. We should approach the smooth color image on the website.

A guy (also) named Don(7) came in for a first time visit.  He teaches sculpting at one of the community colleges and sells his images through the website Shapeways.

The dynamic mother / son duo of Karen(8) and AJ(9) came in for a first time visit.  AJ goes to Roosevelt H.S.   He’s fixin’ to go off to Cornell (or some such place) in the fall.  He had a calculus homework assignment to make a diorama depicting a sin function vs the volume under the curve. He walked in with a complicated 3D model that he’d whumped up in TinkerCAD(?) but it refused to 3D print.  At the end of the day it was just a set of equilateral triangles, side by side, so AJ shifted gears and that’s what he made. He laser cut 32 black acrylic equilateral triangles, certain sizes. The smallest one was so little it wanted to fall through the mesh in the laser floor.  Kevin(10) (back from his Korea trip) weighed in with a little calculus of his own and fashioned a sin wave shaped base (also in black acrylic) for AJ’s triangles. How Kevin did that in Inkscape shall remain a mystery.   Karen had a lot of time on her hands while she waited. Soooo . . . she learned to design and make a key fob with the laser cutter.  Still more time . . . OK . . . she coughed up a DisneyWorld passport photo from her cell phone and we made a photo cube.  When she chins herself, Karen delivers the exact calibrated weight needed to pump the hydraulic press to die-cut the flat pattern.

Who else?  

Steve(11), a guy we met on Dec 3 at the Lion’s Senior center (where Mary works) came in for a first time visit.  Steve laser cut a key fob with his daughter’s name. C-h-a-r-l-o-t-t-e 

Gabby(12) popped in to fetch a green suitcase of mystery stuff from the SpareParts storage rack and raced off again to the Dreaminoid game place to do a Mini Art Museum gig.

Mikel (13) and Amanda(14) ate Whataburger while the glue dried on their huge picture frame that they ripped from a 2x4 and some nice plywood.  Next: Gray paint.

Peggy(15) watercolored a floral scene, made a Whataburger run for her patented lettuce wrap, and got to hold the cutest 14 month old toddler (is her name Amy? an A-name, I’m pretty sure)(16) while Dad Chris(17) laser marked wooden gears.  He is making some sort of clockwork cradle that rocks a smaller-than-Amy baby.

Karen, I’m cc’ing you.  We enjoyed meeting you two.  But now you owe us a picture of AJ’s project.  Reply to all.

Don

[Tookys]

Forgot to mention that I was there pouring concrete for my new foundry furnace that I'm using to make a Lathe from scratch.

[Peggy Guillory]

Chris' little precious one is Violet.  Thank you to Violet for letting me spend beautiful time with you!

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[Don Smeller]

This week, we at 10Bit were into leather.  

Jessi,(1) former military brat, former military herself, multilingual,  now has a business making, according to her business card: “Custom Leather Armor, Costumes and Accessories”.  It is called Fantasy Art.    She usually makes her leather creations by hand, one-off, but this order was for 8 crowns, and she had to get them out quickly.  Hubby Nick(2), UTEP grad,  had been to 10BitWorks for the first time a few weeks ago.  He knew about our laser cutter. He brought Jessi, a whole cow hide, and a thumb-drive with vector artwork.  They left with some really gnarly stuff.  Visit their website.  http://jafantasyart.com

Evan(3) was on a mission to make leather wallets.  He and Nick had never met before but together they worked out a few tricks to mask and engrave the leather, and to pre-compress it before cutting.  Leather is an amazing material.

We got a nice letter from Karen who brought son AJ last week to 10Bit to work on a high school AP Calculus homework project.  She included this photo.  They are just equilateral triangles. Whadayathink?  Does AJ get an A?  At least!  Right?

James(4) was on vacation last week so he spent his time at 10Bit building his metal-working shop. There’s actually a hardbound book, a Bible on how to do just that.  It starts with a DIY furnace. Check.  James got that done.  Next.  The first project with the furnace is to sand-cast parts for a lathe. Not pretty.  The DIY sand recipe doesn’t stick and pack so good.  BTW.  The rejected heat did not go to waste.  James cooked chicken on top of his furnace.  He reported that it was a little dry.

Chris-John(5), Chris(6) and John(7) are three different people, all in the space at once.  Add to that a Don(8) (my real name is Donald) and a first time visitor named Donald II(9) and his son Donald III(10).  What are the odds?

Anyhow,  Chris-John and his friend David(11) are IT guys working for Alliance-Bernstein.  That’s an investment company.   They answer the help-desk phone when the little old lady can’t get her AOL dial-up to access their company’s website.  All she wants is to check on her IRA.   Chris-John asked to 3D print an enclosure for a Raspberry Pi.  John volunteered to walk them through the steps: Slic3r, OctoPrint, Gramps and voila . . .  

.

John also volunteered to help Henry(12).  Henry, from Burbank High School, is making progress on his Delta Printer kit.  Now he’s up to the point where the mis-assembled hot end fails and the filament freezes in the nozzle and you get out the tiny drill bits, and the steel guitar string, and the heat gun.  Ah, yes!  It brings back memories.

Chris arrived on his bike.  His latest project is programming a phone App.  It’s Uber for restaurant people.  You know: busboys and waitresses and lettuce choppers on the supply side need jobs while owners and managers on the demand side need warm bodies to fill in for a shift or a week because somebody called in sick. As is the case with everything in this day and age, there’s an App for that.  Or there will be when Chris gets done.

Donald II is an engineer at Southwest Research Center.  He came with toddler son Donald III and stroller bound Jeremiah(13).  They got the nickel tour.  

Craig(14) is adding more crooks and nannies to his humidor.  He was noodling out yet another finger-jointed design in OnShape.

Greg(15) arrived sans daughter Morgan the girl scout cookie peddler.  Despite that, the thin mints got purchased and shared.  Interesting, Nick (of Jessi and Nick above) confessed to having a connection with the GS. He worked for the girl scouts in El Paso.  It was an office of 70 women and 3 guys. Ay, chihuahua!  He’s a commercial artist.  Can’t resist a Tom Swifty here: Nick knows vectors, pointedly. 

Charles(16) and Bruce(17) showed up for their First-Saturday meeting of the XCSSA   Near as I can figure, they had some sort of ancient multimeter that was being restored.

Kevin(18) came but absent Sue.  I figure she gets a bye;  it’s pollen season.  Kevin spent a lot of his time with the leather crowd.

Last but not least,  in walked Terri(19) the Cupcake Lady.  She’s maybe 60 years old, a South San neighborhood character.  She bakes up a batch of cupcakes and walks the sidewalk making a little money.  Buck a cupcake.  My policy:  anytime a small female approaches me selling confections, I buy.  

Don

 

[Tookys]

For anybody interested in some pics of my furnace /chicken being cooked.

10BitWorks on behalf of Don Smeller <sa-hack...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

[Gilmore, Burton W]

Don this Scotty Gilmore – the miniatures maker.  I want to make sure that you guys are still getting my membership dues from my credit card.  Sorry I haven’t been there but I was hospitalized for Dec and ½ January.   I plan on spending more time there on Saturdays during the summer and retirement  J   enclosed is a shot from my new diorama “Game of Thrones – Spring is Coming – Antechamber to Hell”   I am on deviantart.com  under “sdiggman”  - there are 400+pics of miniatures if anyone is interested.  Ps I have a new cell #  210-842-5621

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[Randy Ohman]

Wow, amazing workmanship. What is the scale?