Shapeoko Mill

Shapeoko 3 Upgrades – Part 1.3

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

Good news this time.

So there is good news… I did use this as a chance to buy a new tool but what I bought was a 48″ level with milled sides. Guaranteed to be flat to .0005″ (right, pull the other one, it’s got bells on.)

In any case it’s bound to be straighter than my extruded aluminum circular saw guide.

The new level indicates that my torsion table is pretty darned flat!

This makes me happy and now I can continue with the build.

In more good news I took apart the Shapeoko 3 base, popped out the pressed in nuts, drilled out the holes to 5/16″ and checked the T-Nut positioning…

They are just about dead-on in all three positions. I’ll probably open up the holes in the end pieces another 1/32″ just to give me a little more wiggle room for alignment, but I’m feeling pretty good about this project now. 🙂

Shapeoko Mill

Shapeoko 3 Upgrades – Part 1

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

My Shapeoko 3 has been sitting in my shop pretty much neglected for a while.

Part of it was that I’ve been busy with other things around the house – prepped and painted a room, had the holidays, etc., and other family things.

The other part of it was that I’ve been thinking about upgrades for the Shapeoko 3 pretty much since I took it out of the box. I have no quibble with Edward Ford’s design, but I’m a tinkerer, like many Shapeoko owners, and I can’t leave well enough alone.

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Misc

My Music Streaming Solution

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

I’ve been collecting mp3s for years. I have about 32,000 files, over 200GB of music.

What I haven’t had is a way to play them on my good stereo gear in the living room. Sure, I can load a bunch of them onto my Android phone and play them that way, but that’s not super convenient. However it has been the method so far.

There have not been any really good solutions in the past that did what I wanted. I wanted a shared library, so I can play the songs on multiple devices. That means I can’t store the music on my desktop (which I didn’t want to do anyway.)

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Life

More 528i Wagen Fun!

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

About two weeks ago I had a ball joint fail in the rear suspension of Der Wagen. I had to have it towed to my local shop for repair.

I was driving through the parking lot at work looking for a space when all of a sudden there was a “bang” from the rear of the car followed by a grinding noise and an immediate slowing down.

car2
Putting it on the big hook.

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3D Printing

3D Printer “Art”?

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

I was running a print job last night and it seemed to be going fine so I wasn’t paying much attention to it.

Apparently the tall thin part fell over after it was about 80% done. The printer just blissfully kept printing along in the air, extruding filament all over the place.

What fun.

In other news I just ordered  an E3D-V6 hot end to replace the one that came with the printer. The E3D-V6 is supposed to be the shizz-nit in hot ends. Hopefully it will improve the quality of my prints and allow me to reduce the print time.

I’m sure I’ll have to print a new mount or something too.

We’ll see.