#diy-tool

[makerspacelt]

Anyone who has been in Kaunas Makerspace for at least a few times, likely already knows that no project involving a cordless drill can start without having to charge said drill first - then, after an hour or so, realize it isn't charging, and repeat the process with another drill.

Renardas decided to solve this problem once and for all. He and other members of Makerspace who quickly joined in to this project, built a fresh Li-Po cell battery packs for every cordless drill, with far more capacity then the original batteries, and three fancy charging stations for them.

Various techniques were used to see this project to the end - laser cutting, 3D printing, spot welding, and so on. As always, Renardas described the project in great detail in his blog - read about it here: http://9v.lt/blog/meec-custom-cordless-drill-battery-and-charging-station/

[makerspacelt]

Taking PCB making up a notch with a toner transfer machine made from broken paper laminators.

Mechanical challenge: Default laminator feeds paper quiet fast. For toner transfer we need to slow it down like 4 times or so. It's synchronous motos running directly from mains, so there is no simple electronic solution to slow it down. A bit of fiddeling with spacing, rearanging gears and driving two laminators with only one motor makes it slow enough and still fits together.

Electronical challenge: Every laminator has heating element and thermoresistor. Microcontroller (ATMega328) controls each heating element via relays individualy and reads temperature from thermoresistors. After some trials temperature for all laminators was set to keep about 180C.

Added feature: After initial power on microcontroler turns on one heater and waits for a temperature reading go up. It repeats steps for all heaters and maps heaters and coresponding thermoresistors.

The code: You can find source code at github: https://github.com/makerspacelt/pcb-laminator

[makerspacelt]

Aivaras recently brought a really nice piece of test equipment. It can detect most discrete parts and list their main parameter. Extremely usefull for transistors to detect pinout and measure gain without digging for a datasheet. Device would not last long with naked board and 9V battery flapping in the wind... But we have a technology to solve this problem - lets 3D print the case for this device!

[makerspacelt]

The time came to attach the motor... somehow... Simplest solution was quickly implemented. It turned out that round rubber belt slips very easily. But we found a decent v-belt, made another set of pulleys and it was time to bite some aluminum!

[makerspacelt]

Spindle housing turned out quiet nicely, bearings fits snug, endcaps fits precisely. Near the collet is an angular contact ball bearing for axial and radial loads. On the other end is a simple ball bearing that holds only radial loads and has freedom to move axially.

[makerspacelt]

Darius started this project long long time ago, then we even didin't had access to a lathe. Firstly he bought a C10-ER11A-150L shaft on ebay. Then started drawing spindle housing and bought bearings locally and that's about it what he could do at a moment. Project resumed later on then a lathe magically appeared in the space, so he started turning spacers and eventually tried tightly fitting bearings to the practice piece.

[makerspacelt]

CNC machine is getting an upgrade. Moving away from Arduino with GRBL to LinuxCNC via parallel port.