Well, here we are, 2021 is here. Let’s show the shop as it stands in 2021. This is of course only the machining side but in another 10 years the pic will be of interest to people who like this kind of stuff. Also, been here for over 10 years now. wow.
That is all.
Well, for some time we’ve taken to building new Bore Gage for a customer. In an odd twist, I had very little to do with the mechanical design but was primarily focused on the electronics and software.
Basically what this device does is measure the bore of a hydraulic cylinder in a comparative way all the way down the bore. It uses a Mitutoyo encoder for the diametrical size and a US digital rotary encoder on the wheel to keep track of the distance down the bore. As the device measures, it keeps track of the position and the measurements therein and creates zones where an average, maximum, minimum and sample size is kept. It is then plotted out along the distance.
Anyways, I had some fun doing this project and I am looking forward to doing more.
Now that COVID-19 is in full swing around the world, I have a bit of extra time. I designed a new measuring head using the Renishaw RLC2IC magnetic encoder head from RLS.
This was borne from a need for one of these things but not wanting to spend $1200 CAD. Also, being able to use whatever connector you want is a nice touch.
In a package that’s 1.65″ x 2.5″ x .75″ you can plop this guy on the end of whatever and measure the insides of things (or dial them in). Also not shown is the strain relief for the ribbon cable or cable that would come out of the unit. The design isn’t fancy and I haven’t thought about attachment provisions yet but I should be making one of these this week.
The encoder itself is quite small and the output is standard quadrature so that makes it quite handy for all kinds of applications. Anyways, will update when I actually make this little guy.
Like many of my posts, I simply update for the sake of updating. That’s fine as far as I’m concerned. A lot has happened since my last update. Been to Japan, designed a bit of stuff and just have been simply living. Here are a few things I’ve been working on…
So, with that. I finally took the trip I’ve been wanting to go on for 20 years, to Japan. Now, I’m not a real weeaboo or anything but I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of such a large dense city such as Tokyo and so, with my girlfriend, we went to Tokyo for almost two weeks. It was absolutely amazing!
All in all, I’ve been enjoying my days, playing Rust and just plugging away.
After a bit of work and worry, the gages are ready for shipment and are as nice as I could hope for.
I’m quite proud of these, they’re repeatable and feel damned good in the hands.
Well, the new boring heads I designed came out well, especially after nitriding. Man! is that black finish ever nice! I’ve made many heads before but these turned out nicer than usual.
Well, things are getting busy, I’m sure there will be more to post soon, especially as our gages get done!
Well, the prototype gage is here and it seems to work reasonably well. I’ve given it extra travel over the old ones and it seems to have really nice, smooth action.
Here are some pics
Now to make some styluses and start shipping these things around the world!
It been some time since I’ve updated this blog. While I have designed and made quite a few things, it’s been at the very bottom of my list to update this blog. Anyways, here are a few things I’ve worked on or am working on.
New RTJ gage
So, in an effort to simplify the manufacturing and generalize the usage of the gage I have redesigned it. With 3/4″ of travel it will allow for the use of almost any attachment along with the balls that typically fit something like this.
Still will take some time to actually manufacture it but whatever.
A quick gage for a customer
These were commissioned from a customer for the quick checking of a particular size on a production job.
Nothing too spectacular there.
I’ve worked on a few other things such as the forklift safety system. This device was meant to be attached to the forklift and engage a horn when the forklift went to fast. It was completed but the company no longer required it.
Anyways, time to start some more interesting projects in the future.
I need to find out the pinout of a Mitutoyo Counter, well the encoders anyways. I wasn’t able to determine exactly which one was what but we’ll see.
When I do figure it out, I will post the pinout as best I know.
A quick post about nothing amazing but I found a site where there’s an interactive map showing the ages of the buildings. Very cool.
you can see it here
I found I kept making and drawing tile sets for little games I wanted to make and I found it time consuming. some engines require a bit of padding around each tile so that when the drawing is scaled, the next pixel isn’t shown from an adjacent tile.
I quickly wrote it in freebasic in under an hour, there’s an EXE in there too if you don’t want to use freebasic or look at the source. very little to it and everything is straightforward. The program will generate a blank tileset with both borders and internal padding indicators. I may write a program sometime that will automatically pad the tiles as needed from an existing set.
Get GenTiles zip here
Here are some png files that are generated by the program, you could use them directly if you want…
I just wanted to post this on the site for posterity.
Pretty cool methinks!