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21
The Design Shop / Re: Gear Depthing Tool Plans- ideas, suggestions, plans, machining order
« Last post by IACooper on April 05, 2026, 01:52:01 PM »
Thank you.

I agree the sharp edge and narrow contact area for the balls is a potential concern for future wear.  For the time being I'm just being careful not to wind them up with a torque wrench, just nip them.  I suppose the cyanoacrylate will help spread the load a little as well.   Another approach I've seen is to have a machined 'V' groove to locate and align the runners.

Having spent the afternoon depthing and measuring, it seems to have done the job.  To fit the barrel arbor I made a couple of press on adapters with larger coned sockets.  These are partially reamed 4mm but left the taper lead in of the reamer at the end so they wedge onto the end of the runner and thus saved me having to make an extra pair of runners with larger sockets.


Ian
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The Design Shop / Re: Gear Depthing Tool Plans- ideas, suggestions, plans, machining order
« Last post by BillTodd on April 05, 2026, 11:14:30 AM »
Nicely made tool.

I always felt the design was overly dependent on the edges of the holes , and perhaps I should have thought of something more robust.

Looks good though  :D
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CNC / Re: It's new to me
« Last post by ddmckee54 on April 05, 2026, 01:45:22 AM »
I spent most of the day double and triple checking the 3D model against the machine as it currently sits, and found a couple of discrepancies - those got corrected. Last week I picked up a piece of 1/8" x 1-1/2" x 48" HRS barstock, only it was 1/8" plate that had been sheared to 1-1/2" width and I'm OK with that. The problem is that for some reason I had modeled this as 34mm wide and it actually measures at 38mm. I fixed the model, but then I had to be sure that everything was in the proper location. which is not as easy as you'd think. The leadnut plate is centered on the Y axis bearing plate, but the leadscrew is not centered on the plate. While I'm changing a LOT on this machine, I tried to move the minimum amount of hardware from its' original location as possible. When I changed the original Y axis 2020 extrusions to 2040 extrusions, I used the original mounting holes as my starting point. I also kept the original location of the Y axis leadscrew, this was not without consequences. By a happy coincidence the centerline of the leadscrew and the centerline of the Y axis rails all align vertically.

However, the leadscrew's horizontal centerline is 3mm below the horizontal centerline of the 2 rails. This leads to an asymmetrical and somewhat goofy looking leadscrew plate. I've got the layout done on the plate and got the holes center popped. I've even got it cut out, filed, and sanded. The layout lines on the Y axis bearing plates match with the layout lines on the leadnut plate. I'm going to drill an 8mm hole for the leadscrew and make sure that's in the right spot before I do anything else. That'll give me a chance to possibly fix it if I did make-a-da-boo-boo. There's not a lot of wiggle room in some areas, the model shows that I SHOULD have about 8-9mm of clearance between base of the Y axis rails and the leadnut plate. The problem is that I didn't model the heads of the mounting bolts for those rails. I've got MAYBE 2mm, but clearance is clearance Clarence.
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The Design Shop / Re: Gear Depthing Tool Plans- ideas, suggestions, plans, machining order
« Last post by vtsteam on April 04, 2026, 03:46:54 PM »
Thanks Ian. That's a beautiful tool, and photos as well.  :beer:

And especially for contributing a drawing!
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The Design Shop / Re: Gear Depthing Tool Plans- ideas, suggestions, plans, machining order
« Last post by IACooper on April 04, 2026, 02:43:46 PM »
Sorry for well and truly raising a thread from the dead - but at least it's the right time of year for such things!

Having need for a depthing tool and liking the simplicity of this design, I decided to have a go myself.  In the absence of detailed drawings I've needed to sketch it out myself, hence the reason for necro-posting to add some dimensioned drawings should anyone in the future have a similar need and come across this thread.

  [ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]  

I went with 4.5mm balls in 4mm reamed holes (no countersinks or chamfers!)  with 6mm balls in 5mm holes for the hinges.   I also roughly cut out the 'C' shape of the frames first to let any stresses and distortion out of the metal, then machined to shape and again unclamped to let it relax before then drilling and reaming all the holes as the last step so they should all remain true to each other.

The adjustment has a half-round 'nut' which sits in a similar half-round groove on the inside of the one plate, with the end running in a short vertical half-round groove on the opposite side:

  [ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]  

If I wasn't too careful slackening off the adjusters the flippin' balls would drop off their seats.  I fixed this by fully cleaning all the parts then assembling and clamping the runners in position before using a wooden stick to add a small drop of cyanoacrylate glue down the hole behind.  The ball is blocking the hole and is held in position by the runner, so the glue is just going to tack them in position without the risk of preventing them sitting down accurately into position.

I haven't tried it in anger yet, but just setting the arbors together for this photo seems to suggest it's going to do the job for me just fine.

  [ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]  



Ian.
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CNC / Re: It's new to me
« Last post by ddmckee54 on April 03, 2026, 04:20:46 PM »
I HAD the mounting plate in place for a little while, it's back off again.  Past Don apparently forgot that 2 of the mounting holes for the Y axis lead-nut mounting plate SHOULD have been drilled and tapped into the bearing mounting plate for M3 bolts BEFORE it was bolted in place.  I've also discovered that I need to be a LOT more careful in my layout and center popping of the hole centers.  This mounting plate turned out better than the first one, but I apparently miss-read the vernier on my marking caliper on one row of holes because they were off by about 1/2mm.  A little judicious filing corrected that.  The funny part is, that was the same row where I had mistaken a scratch in the aluminum for my layout line and all the pilot holes in that row were about 5mm out of place.  Fortunately all the extra holes will be covered by the flathead bolt so nobody will ever know about the boo-boo - right?  I really can't wait until when I have this thing running, can tell it to go to point X - Y, give me a center mark at that point, and be fairly confident that's where it's actually located - not just sorta close.

It turns out that the depth stop on my drill press is just about worthless when used to get a consistent countersink depth.  The only hole that had a good countersink depth was the first one, the only hole I actually verified, the one I used to set the depth stop that I used for the other 15 holes.  Because none of the other 15 countersinks were flush, they all were proud of the surface.  I could have lived with them being too deep, but noooo....    I wound up having to take the bolts out one at a time, touch the countersink up with the countersink bit in the hand drill, then put the bolt back in.  I don't want to think about how many times I cranked those bolts in and out, before I got the trick down pat of flipping the bolt over and using the head to judge the countersink depth.  Remember that judicious filing, and those 4 extra holes?  Turns out they are no help at all when it comes time to countersink the hole.  They let the countersink wander around like a hotdog in a hallway.

I removed the plate last night and got the hole locations for the leadnut plate mounting bolts laid out.  I was going to get them drilled and tapped, but i think I'll hold off on that for a bit.  At least until I've got the layout of the leadnut mounting far enough along that I can do a sanity check and see if they'll match.
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The Water Cooler / Experiences and opinions about different uses of AI
« Last post by sorveltaja on April 02, 2026, 04:12:26 PM »
At first, a list of currently existing AI types: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/artificial-intelligence/types-of-artificial-intelligence/

Some of them I find to be rather questionable, as they are basically used to replace human workers at corporate, and pretty much at all possible levels nowadays.

But I'll concentrate on 'generative AI, which is used for video processing in this post.

There are more and more Youtube channels, that have only AI-generated content (also called as AI slop). Some of those channels can have quite a lot of views.

Some "history" channels spew out plain false and made-up stories, with grayscale images/videos. So of course they must be authentic, right?

When there is a 'human looking host' speaking, something is missing; it can keep talking for 30 minutes or more, but it doesn't have human factors involved, like clearing throat, or change its posture.

Another sign of using AI is the use of artificial film grain, pretending that such videos have some credibility. Yes, they may make a lot of money for their creators, and that seems to be the only motive for such 'content creators'. I guess some kind of automated process is used to create them.

I've watched numerous of those videos on certain channels. Although the content and subjects may appear to be interesting, there are some kind of repetitive patterns, that I can't explain or fully understand, but which tells me that there are not a real human(s) involved in such videos.

I could make a long list here, but instead an example of another kind of videos: 3I  atlas - what a jolly good subject to create countless AI generated channels and "content". And don't ever forget to use superlatives in those video titles.

At this point, one subject, where the AI is not always successful, is to create videos of persons who then may have six fingers, or other weird glitches (especially if the 'creator' is sloppy and lacks any talent).

But enough of negative sides of AI.

The other side can be hilarious, when the videos are processed with skill. like this (they are called 'deepfakes') from 'Ctrl Shift Face' channel:
_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPhUhypV27w

There is another channel as well, but as it's politically oriented, I think it may not be suitable to mention it here.
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CNC / Re: It's new to me
« Last post by ddmckee54 on March 31, 2026, 05:24:52 PM »
Over the weekend I made the mounting plate for the Z axis carriage and the Y axis bearings. I screwed up when I cut the plate, I didn't cut on the waste side of the line. But that's OK, because I left a 5mm gap between the bearings - so I just squeezed them together a couple of mm. What wasn't OK was the fact that 2 of the 4 holes for EACH of the 4 bearings were in the wrong place. The 2 sets of holes that were perpendicular to the rails had the correct spacing, the 2 sets of mounting holes that were parallel to the rails were not correct. I downloaded the specs for an SBR12UU bearing, which said that the center to center spacing was 28mm - in BOTH directions, Those specs are what I used in my design, and when I made the mounting plate.

When the mounting holes didn't line up I started double checking everything, the drawing said 28mm center to center spacing, the layout lines measured 28mm, the holes measured 28mm on centers. My bearings on the other hand measured 28mm C-C across the rail, and 26mm C-C parallel to the rail. So I started checking to see if maybe I had something different than an SBR12UU bearing. What I found was another SBR12UU spec that matched my bearings. How can the SBR12UU have 2 different specs? I do know how I got 4 bearings that matched one spec and 4 that matched the other spec though. I bought a pair of 1m long 12mm rails with 4 SBR12UU bearings from one supplier. I had to cut the rails to length anyway,  so I got rails long enough to get the 2 sets of rails.  That supplier didn't offer just the bearings, so I ordered another 4 SBR12UU bearings from another supplier. That also explains why 4 of the bearings needed an M6 grease fitting, and the other 4 needed M5 fittings.

I'm in the process of making a new mounting plate, this time using the correct center to center spacings. The bag of misfit parts will get another donation, but I'm not taking the rap for this one.
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Software Tools / Re: Experiences, thoughts and rants about using Linux as a newbie after Windows
« Last post by awemawson on March 31, 2026, 05:01:19 PM »
I use the free version being a tight wad. Today I asked it to clarify which way up Rank Chevrons should go on British uniforms and it confirmed my view that the point is downwards. I pointed out that many AI pictures get confused even having correct and inverted ones in the same picture. It agreed and when I said it just shows how bad AI can be it started giggling !
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Software Tools / Re: Experiences, thoughts and rants about using Linux as a newbie after Windows
« Last post by sorveltaja on March 31, 2026, 03:36:35 PM »
Quote from: awemawson on March 30, 2026, 05:46:05 PM
But I find ChatGPT very goodat answering the 'How do I do . . .  and it digs me out of holes!

I've actually thought about starting a new thread about if there are any positive uses for AI. I have used free version of ChatGPT, and in my case, it's a valuable tool - for example, when I'm searching something on the net, and don't necessarily know what terms to use (as a non-english bugger), it can provide context to take the search further.

Yes, I've used it quite a lot on Blender and Linux issues, but sometimes, it spews things like "I'll provide laser sharp solution to your problems". At one time I told it to not overly elaborate(if that's the correct term) - just stay on the subject, and behave like the machine that you are - no emotional hooks. 

 

 

   

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