I don’t often find something to talk about, but when I do you can’t shut me up. Overcommunication shouldn’t be hard.
I’m glad you think so! My original prototype is still a daily carry for me, and the last time I heard from the only other person who has one it’s one of his, too. I’m super excited to see what more people think.
I’m kinda figuring that out, yeah. Just doing my best to make the wait less excruciating. I’ve been paid deposit money, so I’m trying to make the wait have some value as well.
I’m finding that out, yeah. I’ve moved past a lot of the difficulty with learning how to program the parts with my new CAM system, and I’ve gotten enough experience with most of the tooling I need, so at this point it’s just having the machinery run. I’m using the lathe more consistently for my side gig here than I do for my day job. I’m apparently shaking some things loose that need some fixing.
Hit a snag, letting you know. The encoder that gives the controller feedback on how fast the spindle is turning went out while I was cutting a yoyo last Friday. On the machining side, that means that I don’t have a way to get a consistent chip load on anything I cut that has a changing diameter as I move along the shape profile. On the product side, it means I don’t have a good way to get a clean surface on anything I cut. I can still use the machine and cut stuff, but I’m not expecting particularly good results until I get the part replaced.
It’s a much less involved repair than the spindle rebuild, so that’s a plus. Essentially as soon as I have the replacement part in hand it should be as easy as bolting it on and plugging it in. I’ve already started the process of sourcing a replacement, though according to both of the companies I’m asking they are apparently made to order and the manufacturing lead time is between 1 and 3 weeks. As soon as I have my boss’ go ahead, that’ll get ordered.
I’ll do a writeup of why the encoder failure is a pretty big deal tonight after my wife goes to bed. Should shed some light on the mechanics of surface finish and tool wear, might be interesting to some people.
In the meantime, in the interest of doing what I can to hit the end of April deadline for earlies, I’ll try and cut a unit or two in constant linear feed mode (instead of constant feed/rev mode) and see how that goes. I’m not expecting it to be all that great, and the attempt might end up killing a couple inserts. I’ll report back when I have a chance to test.