~ Prep Work ~

Spent a few hours in the garage today.
A little bit of time was working on the machine, but most of my time was spent measuring and building the jig for putting a clean edge on rough cut lumber.

Although I'm not a complete novice, I definitely am not an accomplished woodworker by any means.  I have a request for some welcome signs that I am trying to deliver.  I purchased some hardwood boards from a local business called A&H Turf & Specialties.  It was probably obvious to the guy behind the counter that I didn't have a lot of experience working with hardwoods.  Even if it wasn't, I felt like he went the extra mile, explaining to me about working with exotics as well as more common woods like Oak and Maple, all while not making me feel like an amature.  I definitely will be buying from A&H in the future.

Once I got home, I realized that cutting to length and gluing up these boards was going to be more involved than expected due to the rough cut edges (see the novice here...).  I don't have a jointer or even a block plane so I got online and started looking for ideas on how to rip down the edges on these boards so I could glue them together.  While I was looking around I came across a short and sweet article on woodmagazine.com that showed a simple jig solution to my problem.  Of course I didn't follow the plan, but below you can see the version I made out of some spare MDF and a couple of 1/4"x3" screws.  It worked great!

Finished Jig for holding rough cut lumber.  It can hold stock up to 24" long and 10" wide

 Now that I have a jig made up, I will be able to true up almost any rough cut lumber I get my hands on.  I remember from high school shop class gluing up wood for chess boards and cutting boards.  It sure was different when you don't have a nice heavy layup table and running water 6 feet away.  I'll have to think about building a torsion box for laying up and gluing in the future but for now,  I used the back of my old waste board from the CNC router and managed not to glue my hardwood to it!

I cut one edge on each of these boards with the jig.
I hope to surface it this week and do a purple heart or black walnut inlay.

After getting the glued boards to a safe place in the shop, I decided that I should look into leveling the new waste board on my CNC.  I pulled out the dial gauge from my lathe and ran it around the bed.  I was really surprised.  compared to the home location, the highest spot was right in the middle, and was 0.017" higher than 0,0.  The lowest spot was -0.012" compared to 0,0.  Tomorrow, I'll head down to Harbor Freight Tools to buy a feeler gauge set.  I should be able to get the bed leveled pretty quickly by using the feeler gauge as shims.  I can't wait to get my threaded inserts installed and back to running the machine!

The newly installed waste board with machined holes ready to accept threaded inserts.

You would think...

Pushing forward with the upgraded waste board on the CNC router.  set 90 8.75mm holes at 3.1" apart and 10mm deep.  This should be sufficient to install the threaded inserts for the hold down clamps.  Until now, I have been just screwing material to the old waste board.  I've found that although this is very effective method of holding down material, it also causes a lot of extra setup time, waste material, and sometimes complicates design especially on material that must be surfaced.
Unfortunately, no one in this town carries even close to that many threaded inserts so I had to order them, and now I will be waiting until Monday to get the inserts installed.  oh well.  I guess this gives me time to do some micro-leveling of the surface and to finish my jig for squaring up rough cut lumber on the table saw.

I'll try to get some pictures of the bed and jig posted up this weekend.  In the mean time here is a  pre-upgrade video.

Collector CNC: Just Getting Started

It may have been overly ambitious...  About 6 years ago I got really interested in RC helicopters and airplanes.  A friend had been "doing" RC for quite a while, and I had watched him fly his RC plane several times.  After seeing how he could fly, it didn't take much encouragement for me to blow a few paychecks on a plane, helicopter and several short course trucks. It might have been several planes, 3 or 4 helis and 5 trucks.  Like I said, a few paychecks...

Two of the trucks I built

The RC Room

Anyway, to get back to the point, I re-discovered that I suck at hand/eye coordination, and excel at detail oriented assembly, setup and general programming.  Needless to say, my sucking at RC is what got all this started. It really re-lit an old fire and drove me to get into 3D printing and 3D CAD.    

I foolishly purchased a production model 3D printer from a big 3D printing company and had nothing but problems.  So over the last 2 years I  researched and modified that printer into a working and reliable machine.  While doing that I have also built a Shapeoko2 based CNC Router, and taught myself the basics of VB.NET programming.  

Conversion of 3D printer to Open Source

My 3'x3' CNC Router in process of being built.  Many of the parts were printed with the finished 3D printer conversion

All that said and done, today is the kick-off of Collector CNC!  My family is on board, and I am dedicating a significant portion of my off time to figure out how to make all this time and self learning pay off.   

Hopefully this will help serve as a portal to other DIYers and Makers who want to get out of the every day and into the hustle on their own!

You can check out some of my shenanigans to date on YouTube Channel