This device is almost complete. Yes, It’s missing its buttons but the device seems to work well and nice and smooth. The real anvils are almost done and the device will ship to our customer fairly soon and I’m glad to see these guys be done!
There are still some tweaks to make especially in the realm of overall rigidity but overall it’ll be a neat device to attempt to bring to market in different ways.
The prototype gage and the gage ring. looking good so far.
Well, it’s coming along with some speed. I am now going to build the final version complete with internal battery charging, better logic and a severe reduction in mass. Hopefully this will go down well with the customer.
The display of the gage. the large 18650 batteries are housed in the right hand side. This will be rectified in later versions.
Anyways, this post was for posterity. As always I hope it turns out well. 
Something I haven’t worked on in a while but is coming up is my new electrolytic deburring machine. I figured I’d post a couple of pictures for posterity.
In it’s current state, it does work to a degree. I need to work on the chemistry of the fluid. Right now it seems to just pit the material. Perhaps the voltage is too low or too high but I suspect it’s purely a lack of conductivity or the incorrect chemistry for this type application.
Eventually we should be able to deburr cutters and various other items. Just thought I’d share.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted and that’s primarily because I’ve been working on a project. I have to keep some of the details to myself but I will show some pictures of the prototype that has taken me a couple of weeks to design and build.
The precursor to my project, the Ultigage.
The device uses the AT715 from Mitutoyo and what an interesting device it is. With a resolution of .0005mm and an RS485 interface, it is an ideal device for measurement and for use on machines. The device, which uses magnetic induction, uses 30ma whereas a lot of other glass scales use up to 250ma @ 5v. This is a pretty cool device.
The prototype board for this device
Well, I can’t get into a great deal of detail because the product I have in mind may compete with other gaging companies like Gagemaker with a universal, handheld, high precision, digital gage that has active, rugged and dynamic probes. The images shown are that of a rough prototype, I’m not normally secretive but once one is built in a few weeks I can post some images of the more refined version.
After all, this is simply a post for posterity.
I’ve been playing around with Game Maker HTML5. Pretty neat I must say. This game is pretty simple and revolves around multiple balls flying along the screen and you protecting your net. The grey, recently created balls do not count as a score so you can ignore them. Nothing special really.
Well things are proceeding apace in the shop these days. Over the last two years we’ve been pushing ahead and growing the shop in terms of equipment and technology.
I have a couple of photo’s, taken from the same spot over a difference of a little over 2 years.
A look at rejent too in November 2010. a little empty looking.
A look at Rejent in February 2013. A Bit messy since the machine on the right has just been moved in.
You can see that the shop is much fuller and has much different machines in it. We’ll see what the next couple of years brings, perhaps a new shop?!?
Just posting some images of a die I made. It came in for servicing and so I decided it’s be prudent to post some images of it for posterity.
A broad view of the simple die, it just simple accepts conduit and punches a couple of slotted holes in it. nothing special.
A closer view of the die. As you can see, the punches and dies are both insertable. Since the material it punches is quite thick, the gap is quite large, like .006″
Anyways, nothing too special but I figured I’d keep it here for posterity.
The glorious PS3010D with its blinking segment and cracked screen. The front panel to the screen was cracked because I flicked it with my fingernail seeing if I could shake it a bit to make the segment work. Nope, just cracked the screen.
Having needed an adjustable power supply with a bit more current, I decided to buy this guy for about $140 off Ebay. I’ve played around with it a bit and I decided to review it because I’m sure there are a lot of people like me who buy cheap test equipment. You don’t pay much and you can’t expect much, but you can just hope it does the job.
I performed a few tests that you can see below:
So, if you looked at the values shown, you’ll see it works OK. Anyways, here are some pros and cons to this device.
Pros:
Cons:
Otherwise, the unit works as expected and I’ll write the LED flicker off as a coincedence. It’s too bad that it’s so loud, they could’ve used a different fan or something, becomes a real distraction. If you need something like this that produces 30V at 10A, this may be good purchase.
A quick post, a shot of my work area as of 2013. Still not tons of equipment but it works.
Well, at work we have a pair of semi-manual Ram EDM machines. The old CHMER seems to cut very poorly, so I wanted to see what the difference was. Here are a few images from the oscilloscope.
The Mercury FPGA from the side
A few weeks back I got my Mercury FPGA unit and what a nice little unit it is. The device plugs directly into a breadboard and could potentially be used as a drop-in for through hole PCB projects. When I got the unit I was impressed with it’s overall appearance, they sure packed this guy tight.
The Mercury FPGA unit from the side
Having played with this a bit I can see the usefulness of this device. Here are some of the features.
You can use the Xilinx ISE design tool to synthesize the project and you can use the Mercury software to upload it to the unit. Just based on the little bit I played with it, it seems to be a very useful unit. It’s great for learning (like I am to a degree) and is well designed and labeled on the PCB. There aren’t a lot of bad things I can say about this device except a couple of minor issues.
Issue one would be the sheer size of it. The unit fits on the bread board but with only one spot left on each side to connect things. This is a very minor issue and they did a good job making it as small as it is with as many pins and size of chips it does have, but having only one remaining pin could be an issue.
Issue two is its price. At $65 USD it’s a but more expensive than some other units out there. That said, they are unique in their pcb profile and the developers have to get paid for their time. My serial number was 147 so with such small batches, it’d be difficult to lower the price point. Hopefully it becomes wildly popular and the price can come down to a point where it can be considered a consumable of sorts.
Anyways, aside from my very minor complaints, this device is pretty cool. I can see all kinds of projects benefiting from a DIP style FPGA unit unlike the others which seem to have an arduino style PCB that makes it difficult to include in a project. I recommend that anyone who is going to learn FPGA’s give the Mercury a shot.
The manufacturers website: http://micro-nova.com/mercury
Thanks for reading!
I decided to try out my new Hantek DS1060 and get some waveforms from the head of the EDM (Electrical Discharge Machine). The probe was hooked to the head of the machine and the ground was connected to the frame. I only took a few measurements but it may be interesting to some to see what the pulses look like when it’s cutting. This cut was burning at 75us on and 37us off.
This is the waveform while cutting at 75us on and 37us off. 8A current
You can see that the voltage doesn’t drop to zero, and there seems to be a dropoff after the ionization path has started to cut the material. These dropoffs after the spike seems to indicate that the path is ionized and current control has kicked in, providing 8 amps. Once the time is up, the current shuts off and then there is a ringing spike, perhaps due to inductance. From there the voltage doesn’t reach zero but probably sits at a continuity testing voltage for a little under the 37us. From what I can tell, 75us is started from when the ionization path is established, and 37us is the time it cuts off the current, event though there is still voltage (and maybe a bit of capacitiance).
A view of the measurements taken from the oscilloscope
The measurements seem to correlate to the settings a bit. The EDM itself is set for a 240V cutting voltage so the VMax of 181V is pretty close. I think those values are a quite flexible, I know that before it cuts at all, the voltage is at approximately 240VDC.
Anyways, I thought this would be interesting to post since some people are into EDM machines. I may take some waveforms from the wire EDM and two more different EDM’s. Here’s a final image of a zoomed in view of the peak.
A wider view of the burning process, the short ringing spike must be a check for proximity or from inductance
The Amp Hour Radio Show