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CNC / Re: It's new to me
« Last post by vtsteam on Today at 11:42:11 AM »
Yipes, a string of bad luck! I'm sure you'll get it working soon.

This is what I hate about trying to program absolutely everything in advance, as opposed to measuring and cutting during fabrication. Not that fabrication isn't also subject to errors, but with work in hand, often times you can try pieces against each other, or mark from each other, or quickly measure a fastener and the drill bit you are planning to drill it with, etc.

Some people work better one way, others vary from that. I find I make fewer errors in manual work than I do in additive machining, because the latter demands advance perfect location of all features or a part is often ruined. One frequent problem in an imperfect initial rendering: since infill is usually partial to save material and time, relocating or even resizing a hole or other feature is often not feasible.

Nevertheless, I admire anybody who makes the effort by this or any other means and manages to create something in our hobby. I'm sure this mill project will provide rewards when it starts machining other parts!  :thumbup: :beer:
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CNC / Re: It's new to me
« Last post by ddmckee54 on April 14, 2026, 11:56:52 PM »
The Z axis carriage is starting to come together, literally.

The Z axis rail holder was usable, a little oversized but usable - the bearing block was not. Somewhere between the design notes and the cad operator, the understanding got lost that 20mm was the C-C spacing for the mounting holes, and that the remaining 28mm of the 48mm bearing block width was to be used to center the spindle mounting bracket. Somehow the 28mm became the C-C spaving, and the 20mm was split to center the spindle clamp. The 15mm bore for the bearings was over 15.1mm on the unusable part, not exactly a press fit. And NOBODY caught that boo-boo's before the files were cleared for production. When the assembly techs started screaming that the damned thing don't fit and went on break, THAT's when we found it. The rail holder was supposed to be 60mm wide, it measured 60.5mm. I had originally scaled the STL models to 101.5%, I dropped that back to 101.2% when I reprinted the bearing block. I kept the 6 perimeter walls and 80% infill though.

When I reprinted just the bearing block the print time dropped from 8 hours to 3 hours. I accidently ordered M5x70mm bolts, everything was designed around M6 bolts, but these will due for now.
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CNC / Re: It's new to me
« Last post by ddmckee54 on April 13, 2026, 11:31:08 PM »
I had a couple of 3D printing milestones recently, I started printing with something other than PLA and the P1S glitched on me.  Although in all honesty I probably made it worse than it should have been. 

I decided to try PETG, and I wanted to get the scaling dialed in to correct for shrinkage.  I decided that I might as well be printing something useful to do this testing.  My new spindle uses an ER11 collet, so I found an STL for a chip fan that presses onto the collet nut.  The friendly Google AI said the scaling factor should be 100.3-100.8%, so I scaled the fan to 100.5% and gave it a shot, way too tight.  I scaled it to 100.8% and printed it again. It takes less than 1/2 hour to print the fan - including the 7+ minutes the P1S uses for setup on every print.  It was still too tight, but I could force it on the nut.  I printed it again, this time scaled to 101.5%.  It presses onto the nut, not all the way, but since I didn't design the fan I can only guess the designers intentions.  I WAS going to print a fan scaled to 102%, but that's when the glitch occurred.  I started the print and left to do something else.  When I came back about 15 minutes later I had a bird's nest on the print bed.  It happens, so I did what I do when the D6 screws up late at night - I shut off the power and went to bed.

When I got up the next day and fired up the printer it was not happy with me, the AMS was making very unhappy noises.  I realized that I SHOULD have aborted the print, then shut off the power and gone to bed.  Ain't 20/20 hindsight just wondermus though?  I realized that the filament had frozen in the extruder and that I needed to get it out of the hot end so the AMS could retract it and be happy again.  But, I needed to do that before the AMS was powered up.  I decided to try unplugging the AMS, heat up the hot end, and see if I could pull the filament back by hand - to see if that would work.  I did, and it did - so I decided to try printing again.  All seemed to go well, until it tried starting to print about 50mm above the print bed.  All I could do was abort the print and hang my head in shame wondering "What the Hell did I do to this poor machine?"  Before I contacted Bambu Labs and confessed my sins, I wanted to run the initial calibration cycle again.  I wanted to see if that would let the printer find its' lost marbles. 

I'm proud to report that it worked and the plastic pooping robot is now about 7 hours into an 8 hour print.  That print will give me the Z axis rail holder, and the bearing block that will slide on those rails.

Don
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Gallery / Re: USS Monitor Steam Engine Drawings -Free
« Last post by vtsteam on April 13, 2026, 09:11:40 PM »
Again, thank you Rich for this remarkable gift!  :beer:
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Gallery / Re: USS Monitor Steam Engine Drawings -Free
« Last post by Rich Carlstedt on April 13, 2026, 06:45:46 PM »
What a Klutz  !

I meant to add that anyone who wants the drawings can also send me a note here using messages or use my direct address - grnbaystmr  "AT"  gbonline.com - the AT used here is to divert web searches and spam . use the ast...  and    no dashes

Send theirr home email and I will send them by email in 5 packages .. It's like 29 Meg donload in one shot
and that would get me in trouble with my provider. 
IMPORTANT , The Subject line must say MONITOR  in Caps
Rich
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Gallery / Re: USS Monitor Steam Engine Drawings -Free
« Last post by tom osselton on April 13, 2026, 05:56:42 PM »
Thanks for the info  :beer:
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Gallery / Re: USS Monitor Steam Engine Drawings -Free
« Last post by Rich Carlstedt on April 13, 2026, 03:35:43 PM »
Up Date 2026 - April 13

Yes, The drawings were withdrawn during a web site revision two years ago, sorry about that .
I have been advised they will  be re-posted, and will return to the same web site
It may take a few more weeks for that to occur, so keep trying .

I have spent the past 5 years writing a book (technical) on the engine and all of it's components to help those who downloaded the drawings and those
who wish to know more about the engines' operations and design  and other data from my research
That book is very close to completion and I hope to have it published before years end so I can go back to modeling.
Thank You for your patience , This is a not for profit undertaking

Rich
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Member Videos / Re: My week this week, my workshop videos!
« Last post by hermetic on April 11, 2026, 11:04:38 AM »
Hi Folks
This fortnight I managed about two days in the field, and one in the workshop, so a very mixed bag of phone and camera footage about as chaotic as my fortnight turned out to be! The rest of my time was taken up with spring chores, family commitments, a day bird watching at our local nature reserve ( a 5-1/2 mile walk in the countryside around our local water works at Watton) etc etc! With Emily now back at uni for the forseeable, I am hoping to get more done! Fun with fires in the field, and a day of antique repairs with Andy, whats not to like? probably most of it!! LOL
Phil, Still jumper weather in East Yorkshire
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CNC / Re: It's new to me
« Last post by ddmckee54 on April 09, 2026, 10:49:23 AM »
Thanks greatly for pics!  :beer:
I had my old Blueberry flip-phone for so long, I keep forgetting that my new flip-phone has a camera.  It doesn't have the anti-blur capability of my camera so sometimes it takes several attempts to get a decent shot.
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CNC / Re: It's new to me
« Last post by vtsteam on April 08, 2026, 07:50:00 PM »
Thanks greatly for pics!  :beer:
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