Here’s a panorama of Edmonton in the summer time, specifically July 2022
http://smackaay.com/files/edmontonpano072022.png
Enjoy!
Over the years I’ve posted things to this site as a bit of a reminder to myself about the kinds of things I’ve done over the years. It has now been about 15 years since I started the site and that prompted me to go through old photos, back some stuff up and reminisce about days gone by. I’m going to post a number of photos that I’ve found that are purely of interest to me but, hey, maybe somebody else might enjoy them too.
Well, there we go. Thanks for walking through 2007 to 2009 with me. I was expecting to be enthralled with my pictures of Edmonton but I guess work was, as always, more interesting to me.
Well, I’ve been here at Rejent on and off for the last 12 years. Now the company is moving to different digs and I figured I’d take some arguably unflattering pictures of the shop. Things are in disarray and thigs are a bit dirty as well.
A view across some the main path through the back 
The Drilling area. Used to be the grinding area with CNC tool grinders but those are gone. 
The sundeck. There doesn’t appear to be any lights here 
A view of the EDM bay from the back. 
Looking down on the EDM’s 
The lunch room 
The parking lot 
The EDM bay again 
The AW3 
The AW6 
A bad pano of the CNC area
Right now these things seem mundane but in 20 or 40 years there will be somebody, perhaps even myself who will enjoy looking at photos like these. Our new place will be in the old Precimax building and while it doesn’t have that much more room, it will be a fresh start and we can organize things with a pinch of pride.
The Stanko with the VF5 in the background 
The Mitutoyo CMM 
The manual side 
The Hyundai Wia 
Again, looking across the CNC lathes and mills
Here’s to a good move!
We’ve had these things in waiting for quite some time. I’ve designed them to be lighter, more accurate, less snaggy and a bit sleeker. They take the standard heads that I’ve made for the last 4 years and still move linearly so that you can put whatever kind of styli you want on them. The older ones used to snag due to the fact that there were two bearing being forced to cock over in certain circumstances.
As things heat up in the world and the economy either booms or busts, hopefully we’ll be able sell some!
Over the years I’ve had issues with large parts and finding easy ways to lay them out angularly, especially on the ram EDM. During this time I’ve kind of tinkered in my head with an idea whereby you have a level of sorts stuck to the part and you simply rotate it and have a direct reading of rotation applied to the part. I have tried those digital levels but accelerometers don’t have the precision required to get within a few thou over, say 6 inches.
It’s obviously very rough and uses a cheap Chinese 2000ppr encoder but it’s good enough for .045 degree increments. I would trust this thing for some larger layout and alignment work. That said, I have a nice US digital encoder on the way with 10000cpr (40000 ticks all the way around) so a resolution of .009 degrees. Some issues I’m having is with the mass. If the mass is too small it won’t overcome the friction of the bearings completely and if the mass is too large it swings for a long time making it a hassle to allow it to settle. I’d like to find a solution whereby I can add friction without adding stiction. Frankly the whole thing needs a good concept redevelopment but I believe it’ll be a handy tool in niche situations.
I’ll keep this updated as I go along.
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.
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- A closer look at the gage in the case. We had to rest it on the foam but it’ll work
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- A look at the top of the RTJ gage. It should be noted that these are more general purpose comparators than the ones we’ve used before
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- The gages ready for shipment down to the states.
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.
a forwards facing dnmg holder with a large offset
The whole order
The backwards dnmg holder
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!
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