For a frivolous diversion, I made this miniature Da Vinci cam hammer. No CNC or laser used; tools included jeweler’s saw, lathe, mill, table saw, and drill press.
Woods include cherry, walnut, lemonwood, African blackwood, padauk, and pear.
Turning the crank makes the hammer go up and down. If you’d like to see a 25 second (low resolution) video of it working, here’s the video on YouTube:
38 hour print. This thing turned out sweet but unfortunately still a bit too small. Will have to split it to print bigger.
I took the rotary class recently, tried it out tonight. Will take a bit more trial and error but the glass is cheap at Dollar Tree till I figure it out more.
Deuterium Gas Dryer for the Fusion Project. We make Deuterium from heavy water by electrolysis in a PEM reactor vessel, then drop the heavy water vapor from the Deuterium Gas by chilling the gas below the Dew Point using stacked Peltier cooling wafers in a chiller cube, so we can conserve heavy water.
The system is run by a IOT ESP32 web enabled uComp, and managed in real time by the operators.
A Shittonne of Vaccinations
I’ve been volunteering through the Denton County Medical Reserve Corps at the TMS Mass Vaccinations. This thing is enormous!!!
If you aren’t a Medico (most aren’t), you can definitely help. At the end of the day, they vaccinate all the volunteers they can, and they feed you lunch!
I’m guessing we are fast approaching 200,000 shots, and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. I’ve seen days with 8,000 (Feb 9th was really cold, my mask kept freezing!), and sunny days with 12,000.
This is how the Pandemic ends, Makers. Roll up your sleeve!
(photo credit Ft Worth Star Telegram, volunteers are forbidden from taking photos)
Finally got a day off where I can work on a new wood veneer ornament.
This is a manger scene done in various dyed veneers and weighs less than an ounce. The back is engraved with my favorite Christmas song. 5 more to go for an even dozen for the 12 days of Christmas.
When engraving glass the cheaper the glass the better the engraving, in my experience. More expensive glasses tend to have a higher lead content, which causes more inconsistent laser results.
I’m looking forward to the class.
Beautiful! Where did you get the cheese cutter parts?
Nice work! I did a custom full win bottle on the old lazer that out great a long while back.
I got the wire cutter on Etsy for about 8 bucks.
Shooting for July. I first have to finish the 12 ornaments, then convert each of them into a ‘kit’ of sorts. But I’m having fun doing them. cheers!
I started making my own blanks for pen turning. This is the first. An airbrushed galaxy. Cast in Alumalite Slow Clear.
Spring is here and I’m hoping I won’t be needing our snowshoes ( though we still have some snow on the ground from a storm two weeks ago).
I made this rack to organize and stow the shoes and poles until they’re needed again (hopefully not until Fall). It’ll actually hold six poles and the three pairs of shoes we own, but one set is out on loan at the moment.
This past week I decided to do something new and started a Game Development class on Coursera.
I present to you: My first game! It has a ton of flaws, but I made it!
I’ve heard my mother say that a few times…
I have a history of self defeating perfectionism, so I’m working on learning what I need to learn from a project and then letting it go.
This is a great example of why that’s useful. I could fiddle with this for days and get it exactly the way I want and add a bunch of cool stuff to it, but really its just practice. I’m letting this one be finished but imperfect so I can move onto the next project and learn more.
Maybe when I’ve finished the class I’ll come back to this and try cool new things on it, but until then it stays flawed.
