Alpha Kit Notes
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Sam Putman
Dec 24, 2009, 1:25:01 PM12/24/09
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Hello MakerBeamers!
Most of the Alpha and institutional packages shipped Monday, and all but one are in transit now. This post will have some spoilers, so you might want to get to it after you open the box, whenever that might be.
Okay, here we go:
The first thing you'll probably notice is the beam, wrapped Mission Burrito style. There are (should be) 50 pieces:
4 x 30 cm
8 x 20 cm
6 x 15 cm
16 x 10 cm
8 x 6 cm
8 x 4 cm
This is also what the Betas will be getting, and more than likely what we'll be offering as a base kit when we got into batch production. More on that soon!
Not much to note here, other than to let us know what you think of the proportions provided: both number of beams of each size, and the lengths themselves. If you accidentally have less of something let us know, the beam was carefully counted in comparison to everything else so we should be good to go on this one.
The next part I'll draw your attention to is the bag of screws. These screws are the key to making T-slot work on a small scale, in our view. Assembly works like this: push the head of the screw into the slot, place brackets over, add nuts with your fingers, and tighten with a pliers or socket driver. We gave you 5-6mm to play with, as a compromise between bulk and utility.
The prototype of these screws have a head that's square looking down on it, rather than round. In a bizarre turn of events, our manufacturer gave us the screws you see instead. This is truly strange given that our prototypes, made by the excellent machinist and maker John Morse, are exactly what I expected them to be as the author of the drawing. We're going to do what we can to resolve this, and if we do commission new screws, you will receive them as part of the Beta patch. The good news is that these ones work rather well, though I'm concerned about high-vibration environments, perhaps for no reason, but we'll be testing this in the coming months.
You have 116 grams +/- 1gm of screws. This was derived by counting 251 screws out by hand, weighing them, and adding a gram. This is complete speculation on our part: it should exceed the number of brackets you have holes for, but see below.
You'll notice the brackets next. These were a labor of love, and wow did we learn a lot making them! There's a whole saga here, starting with a naive attempt, which I was warned against, at cutting aluminum on a ShopBot. It can be done, suffice to say, with coolant and the right bits, but that doesn't make it the correct approach for the job.
We ran the program again, this time on a sheet of ABS plastic, and got moderately good results: despite the pieces flying everywhere, some of them were in a pretty good shape. What's more, when we mounted those pieces on the screws, they worked rather well. The screws arrived on the 11th, to give you a sense of the pace at which we've been working.
It became clear that ABS is a pretty good material for brackets, pivots and other MakerBeam gear for light-duty use.
Given its prominence in home 3-d printing we'd hoped for this result. We decided to move forward with making the Alpha brackets on the ShopBot; what followed was a solid week of building a vacuum hold down system and writing CNC path optimization software. Both of these will be documented and released as part of the research dividend of the MakerBeam project. This is why supporting open source hardware projects is a Good Thing. :-)
The upshot is we ruined a couple sheets, learned a lot, and ended up with an unknown volume of each of the three parts we sent you, which were 'divvied up' in pure poker-dealing fashion. In particular, I wanted to send more than the four 45 degree angle brackets that ended up included, but due to an error in the program that cut them fewer of these survived triage. Another consequence is the tiny stabby bits left over from the tabs. We have some ideas for how to get rid of those in production, which we didn't have the time to implement. The best way to get rid of them is to mount the piece on some MakerBeam and trim gently with a razor or sharp knife. Some of the pieces are just a little rough generally, but overall, I'm surprised and pleased with how well it works and how much precision can be squeezed out of the joins.
Much was learned: though the laser is a better tool for this particular job, there's a lot of potential generally for making flat plastic parts from a light-duty CNC router with a vacuum hold-down system. We'll release DXF files for this purpose, and all the relevant ShopBot code; when we go over to lasers, the files for this will be made available also. An interesting historical aside: this ShopBot was used to cut the pieces of the Man for Burning Man festival from 2005-2007. Busy robot!
At least the L brackets will be made in great quantities from some suitable metal for the Beta kits and Institutional packages. We may well stick with plastic for the other two, for now; it simply works well enough, better in some ways, and the tooling for the metal brackets is a significant capital investment. If and when we go over to metal for those pieces, we will make inexpensive booster packs available for those who already have beam and just want the upgrade.
As we've mentioned a couple times, there will be a Beta patch sent out to all Alphas when the Betas ship, consisting of anything we didn't include in your kit that the Betas are getting. This is also when you'll get your 3-d prototype, which we haven't had a chance to print and test; we're kicking around a couple designs, so we're just going to go ahead and surprise you. Also, this is when everyone gets their serial number beam plaque, and when we'll ship the 10 cm pledges as well.
Last but not least: the bag of mixed nuts. What would Christmas be without mixed nuts? <ducks> These are ordinary M3 screws, ordered from McMaster-Carr just as anyone else might do. With the screws arriving as late as they did, and the brackets looming large in our minds, figuring out exactly which nut to order in massive quantity and distribute widely wasn't in the cards. So we ordered a modest selection, basically as many as I dared order knowing that I was going to be counting them out by hand. You have: black nuts, stainless nuts, brass nuts, 'plain steel' nuts, and half-height zinc-plated nuts. All of these are available from McMaster and when I'm not in the middle of Holiday I'll provide a part number for each. Pick what you like if you're in danger of running out of nuts or you want a matched set, and please give us feedback on the ones that you have.
The standard has its own folder in my directory, which has several files in it. It remains to put that into some semblance of order and wrap a bow on it for the Alpha documentation release. We're also revamping the site, so there's a lot going on! Look for this soon.
There are too many people to thank, starting with everyone who contributed to making this possible, whether through pledging on Kickstarter or helping to get the word out. Particular accolades to my partners, Glenn Powers and James Coddington, who have put in weeks of effort to make this possible. The same to John Morse and Mike Gittelsohn, who have put in considerable sweat equity and whose contributions cannot be overstated.
I hope our Alpha testers enjoy what they've gotten and take plenty of pictures for everyone to salivate over! Betas won't be long coming, nor the public release. For now, merry Christmas to all.
Cheers,
-Sam Putman.
--
makerbeam.com
Most of the Alpha and institutional packages shipped Monday, and all but one are in transit now. This post will have some spoilers, so you might want to get to it after you open the box, whenever that might be.
Okay, here we go:
The first thing you'll probably notice is the beam, wrapped Mission Burrito style. There are (should be) 50 pieces:
4 x 30 cm
8 x 20 cm
6 x 15 cm
16 x 10 cm
8 x 6 cm
8 x 4 cm
This is also what the Betas will be getting, and more than likely what we'll be offering as a base kit when we got into batch production. More on that soon!
Not much to note here, other than to let us know what you think of the proportions provided: both number of beams of each size, and the lengths themselves. If you accidentally have less of something let us know, the beam was carefully counted in comparison to everything else so we should be good to go on this one.
The next part I'll draw your attention to is the bag of screws. These screws are the key to making T-slot work on a small scale, in our view. Assembly works like this: push the head of the screw into the slot, place brackets over, add nuts with your fingers, and tighten with a pliers or socket driver. We gave you 5-6mm to play with, as a compromise between bulk and utility.
The prototype of these screws have a head that's square looking down on it, rather than round. In a bizarre turn of events, our manufacturer gave us the screws you see instead. This is truly strange given that our prototypes, made by the excellent machinist and maker John Morse, are exactly what I expected them to be as the author of the drawing. We're going to do what we can to resolve this, and if we do commission new screws, you will receive them as part of the Beta patch. The good news is that these ones work rather well, though I'm concerned about high-vibration environments, perhaps for no reason, but we'll be testing this in the coming months.
You have 116 grams +/- 1gm of screws. This was derived by counting 251 screws out by hand, weighing them, and adding a gram. This is complete speculation on our part: it should exceed the number of brackets you have holes for, but see below.
You'll notice the brackets next. These were a labor of love, and wow did we learn a lot making them! There's a whole saga here, starting with a naive attempt, which I was warned against, at cutting aluminum on a ShopBot. It can be done, suffice to say, with coolant and the right bits, but that doesn't make it the correct approach for the job.
We ran the program again, this time on a sheet of ABS plastic, and got moderately good results: despite the pieces flying everywhere, some of them were in a pretty good shape. What's more, when we mounted those pieces on the screws, they worked rather well. The screws arrived on the 11th, to give you a sense of the pace at which we've been working.
It became clear that ABS is a pretty good material for brackets, pivots and other MakerBeam gear for light-duty use.
Given its prominence in home 3-d printing we'd hoped for this result. We decided to move forward with making the Alpha brackets on the ShopBot; what followed was a solid week of building a vacuum hold down system and writing CNC path optimization software. Both of these will be documented and released as part of the research dividend of the MakerBeam project. This is why supporting open source hardware projects is a Good Thing. :-)
The upshot is we ruined a couple sheets, learned a lot, and ended up with an unknown volume of each of the three parts we sent you, which were 'divvied up' in pure poker-dealing fashion. In particular, I wanted to send more than the four 45 degree angle brackets that ended up included, but due to an error in the program that cut them fewer of these survived triage. Another consequence is the tiny stabby bits left over from the tabs. We have some ideas for how to get rid of those in production, which we didn't have the time to implement. The best way to get rid of them is to mount the piece on some MakerBeam and trim gently with a razor or sharp knife. Some of the pieces are just a little rough generally, but overall, I'm surprised and pleased with how well it works and how much precision can be squeezed out of the joins.
Much was learned: though the laser is a better tool for this particular job, there's a lot of potential generally for making flat plastic parts from a light-duty CNC router with a vacuum hold-down system. We'll release DXF files for this purpose, and all the relevant ShopBot code; when we go over to lasers, the files for this will be made available also. An interesting historical aside: this ShopBot was used to cut the pieces of the Man for Burning Man festival from 2005-2007. Busy robot!
At least the L brackets will be made in great quantities from some suitable metal for the Beta kits and Institutional packages. We may well stick with plastic for the other two, for now; it simply works well enough, better in some ways, and the tooling for the metal brackets is a significant capital investment. If and when we go over to metal for those pieces, we will make inexpensive booster packs available for those who already have beam and just want the upgrade.
As we've mentioned a couple times, there will be a Beta patch sent out to all Alphas when the Betas ship, consisting of anything we didn't include in your kit that the Betas are getting. This is also when you'll get your 3-d prototype, which we haven't had a chance to print and test; we're kicking around a couple designs, so we're just going to go ahead and surprise you. Also, this is when everyone gets their serial number beam plaque, and when we'll ship the 10 cm pledges as well.
Last but not least: the bag of mixed nuts. What would Christmas be without mixed nuts? <ducks> These are ordinary M3 screws, ordered from McMaster-Carr just as anyone else might do. With the screws arriving as late as they did, and the brackets looming large in our minds, figuring out exactly which nut to order in massive quantity and distribute widely wasn't in the cards. So we ordered a modest selection, basically as many as I dared order knowing that I was going to be counting them out by hand. You have: black nuts, stainless nuts, brass nuts, 'plain steel' nuts, and half-height zinc-plated nuts. All of these are available from McMaster and when I'm not in the middle of Holiday I'll provide a part number for each. Pick what you like if you're in danger of running out of nuts or you want a matched set, and please give us feedback on the ones that you have.
The standard has its own folder in my directory, which has several files in it. It remains to put that into some semblance of order and wrap a bow on it for the Alpha documentation release. We're also revamping the site, so there's a lot going on! Look for this soon.
There are too many people to thank, starting with everyone who contributed to making this possible, whether through pledging on Kickstarter or helping to get the word out. Particular accolades to my partners, Glenn Powers and James Coddington, who have put in weeks of effort to make this possible. The same to John Morse and Mike Gittelsohn, who have put in considerable sweat equity and whose contributions cannot be overstated.
I hope our Alpha testers enjoy what they've gotten and take plenty of pictures for everyone to salivate over! Betas won't be long coming, nor the public release. For now, merry Christmas to all.
Cheers,
-Sam Putman.
--
makerbeam.com
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