Gadroc's A-10 Build

I've got the first round of Kink's worked out on my IO controller. The EOS Bus Interface shield is now functional. It boots up scans the EOS bus for active controller boards, polls them for input and relays commands to them.

You see in the video EOS Interface shield on top of an arduino UNO and a bread board version of the gauge controller board. The shield is designed to be able to stack three bus interfaces onto one host arduino. The host is being driven by a command line utility for the time being, but will be integrated into Helios. The gauge controller board is a bare bones arduino which handles the backlighting and alpha/numeric displays and controls an easy driver board to run the stepper motor. Right now I'm using an arduino to prototype but the gauge board itself will be slightly smaller than the arduino board and be self contained.

Cool. :)

Dimebug,

My laser engraver got here yesterday. Mechanically it looks fine, very very well packed for shipping. Box, in a box and about 4" of bubble wrap which took me about a half hour to unpack. As expected some of the quality is not great (exhaust fan not a great fit and doesn't duct fully, but I'm going to cut an 1/8" plate between it and the cutter to seal it just to the opening in the cutter body.

What setup are you guys using? Every time I try and output to the laser it errors out with "data conversion error". I was able to click fixed position and cut out the outline of the drawing and the machine itself worked perfect (albeit just cutting plain white paper).

I can ask the guy if he wants to speak directly with you, it will be more simple :) in the worst case, i can translate. Mp me your question precisly please.

Laser Engraver Day 1 - Having software issues. Every time I try to output something MoshiDraw errors out. it will drive the engraver no problem, but only to cut out the outline of the page. I've seen some posts about it having problems under windows 7 I'm installing XP on the engraving computer. Hopefully that solves the problem. Might have to resort to a 3rd party controller card sooner than I had hoped if that does not work. I was expecting the software to suck so not a big surprise.

Day 1.5 - Success. The software works under windows XP.... much fun to come.

Got CorelDraw installed and linked into MoshiDraw and it works even better! Moshidraw rasters EVERYTHING which means a long cut process for a simple rectangle. When you're using CorelDraw you can export as a PLT file which will to a vector cut or export as BMP if you're engraving text or other graphics.

I should get my shipment of acrylic tomorrow and I can start figuring out the right power settings and making stuff.

great news, i've asked your questions to the owner, answer soon, but looks like you did it !

Looking forward to your progress. If you recommend this laser overall I might have to start thinking about a purchase...hmm

I may need to rethink my process of laser engraving the panels. Right now I engrave through a mask and then spray white to give the letters good contrast. But this method definitely impacts back lighting for the worse. It's also messy, the laser creates a lot of paint dust that ends up sticking to the engravings, so I do a second pass to clear out some of the dust but it still leaves a lot behind and it's very hard to clean out. If you find a better way, please let me know!

I got my acrylic in today and started some test cuts and immediately noticed that the exhaust fan that comes with the machine is not up to the task. Ran out to the local home improvement store and picked up a $30 70CFM bathroom fan and constructed a quick shroud to hook it up. Easily 3 times the airflow and I'm not going to kill myself with fumes anymore. I did use vent tape to seal up the fan housing as well so all airflow heads outside.

I'm still fiddling with cut speed and power. At 5ma and 8mm tool speed I get a good cut on 1/16 cast acrylic but the edges are a little rough, but that might be the lower quality steppers. If anyone has recommendations on how to dial in cutting speed and power let me know. Next up is figuring out the engraving for the lettering. I've got 1/16 rowmax to try out next.

I've been toiling away in both improving my laser cutter and figuring out the right process for making my panels. Thanks every so much to pitbldr for sharing his hard work on the panel layouts.

First up a status on the laser cutter. I've got it working pretty well now. A couple things to keep in mind if your going for a cheap one line like this. It essentially didn't come with a cutting bed. It came with a worthless clamp system which was only good for tiny pieces. I pulled out the existing bed and mounted a set of rails for a new bed. I then made a new cutting bed out of some anodized aluminum sheet cut in a lincane pattern and some .5" c channel aluminum. I'm going to order a sheet of .5" honeycomb aluminum shortly to make it even better. I also cut out a set of shims which go under the bed which allows me to adjust for the focus length and the depth of the piece. This setup is good for me right now as I only deal with 1/4", 3/16", 1/8" and 1/16" acrylic. I just have the bed itself set for 1/4" and have a set of 1/8" and 1/16" shims which let me raise i up for the other depth pieces. I am planning on home to get it setup for a motorized lift for the bed. With the bed in place I have a cutting area of 300mm wide by 190mm tall. The cast acrylic I got cut beautifully and I had no problem engraving the Rowmark Lasermax for the panel tops, but I was having a hell of a time cutting the lasermax. It would always flame up unless I used a cut speed so fast that the cuts got really rough. I went out and got a air brush compressor ($90) and rigged up a quick air assist. Currently I don't really have a nozzle (waiting for them to come back into stock) so the air is not really strong, but it's enough to keep the laser mark from flaming up to bad and I can cut it at a reasonable rate. This brings the total up on the laser to about $900 which is still about half anything else so I'm very happy. I'm probably going to retro fit the controller withe one of digital controllers which cost me another $700 (have to get stepper drivers as well with it) even after that I'll be about half the cost of other comparable models. If you are not up for this type of tweaking and hacking I'd tell people to take a look at full spectrum engineerings deluxe hobby laser. It is what mine after upgrades would be equivalent to.

On to actual pit building. I have build my first panel and I'm pretty happy. In this first picture you see the reflector / light plate. This mounts onto of the back/switch plate. I don't have a picture of it but I painted the inside of this plate silver to reflect more light through the diffuser and engraved top plate. The trick I've found so far to get even lighting is to have this 1/8" air gap between the LEDs and reflector and the diffuser which create a light box effect and evens out the light.

Next up is the completed panel minus switch plate (switch plate didn't fit after fixing my laser focus I needed to widen a few holes and have not re-cut it yet). On top of the reflector plate is a 1/16" white acrylic diffuser panel and then the engraved top plate which is 1/16th lasermax black/white. This was my first attempt at raster engraving and I'll be able to improve on the text now with better laser focus and knowing how to tweak the settings after more test cuts.

Finally here it is with backlighting on in the dark.

I had to remove the 1/8" green I had in before as it cut down the light a little to much, but I am ordering some 1/16" green transparent. I'm on the hunt for some 1/32" green transparent cast acrylic, if anyone knows of a decent priced supplier in the US let me know. This green will go between the diffuser and the lasermax to tint the backlight like an NVIS filter. I'm damn happy with the results so far.

Gadroc,

This is really looks great !!!

Laser or spindle cut

Gadroc et al,

I was getting ready to purchase a CNC machine set up for doing sheet acrylic signage. It has a special plastic spindle. It is a Zen Toolsworks CNC with a 7" x 7" bed. Software all set-up and ready to cut. Seeing this thread I am wondering whether a spindle machine will cut panels like I wanted.

Why did you go with a laser? Does your machine run gcode?

I've been toiling away in both improving my laser cutter and figuring out the right process for making my panels. Thanks every so much to pitbldr for sharing his hard work on the panel layouts.

Glad to help! :D

Froglips - I can't speak for Gadroc, but I have a CNC and a laser. While the CNC will cut out the panels from acrylic fine and faster than the laser, IMO it doesn't compare to the laser for engraving the panels. The CNC can do the engraving, but it takes more precise setup where the laser is more forgiving. For example, if you only want to engrave to a depth of .005", the panel will need to be almost perfectly perpendicular to the Z plane or you'll end up with varying depths. You really wouldn't have to worry about that on the laser.

It can be done though, just takes more patience and tweaking to get good results on the CNC (again, just from my experience).

Wow Gadroc that turned out awesome! One hell of a machine to own!

definitly a great tool :

Gadroc et al,

I was getting ready to purchase a CNC machine set up for doing sheet acrylic signage. It has a special plastic spindle. It is a Zen Toolsworks CNC with a 7" x 7" bed. Software all set-up and ready to cut. Seeing this thread I am wondering whether a spindle machine will cut panels like I wanted.

 

Why did you go with a laser? Does your machine run gcode?

CNC machines make a mess and lasers make a smell ;). When a CNC router is cutting it chips through the material just like a saw and showers the area with dust / chips. Laser melts through the material but has fumes instead of dust/chips. Check out some of oakes videos on cutting out gauges with his CNC machine.

CNC machines can not do inner corners as well as laser cutters. They can never cut a sharp angle as their cutting bit is round so inside corners will always be radius of your bit. Your cut depth is limited by your bit width (wider the bit the deeper it can cut) so to get tighter corners you are going to make many shallow passes with a small bit. Lasers do not suffer from this problem.

In general the laser engraver is simpler for a few reasons. First it's only 2 dimensional in most cases while cutting. Second because the laser doesn't exert any force / pressure / tension on the actual piece being cut you don't have to worry as much about fixing the piece down or generating tabs so inner cut outs don't jam the machine.

I personally have not tried to engrave panels using a CNC machine but the common things I've heard are people being happier with the results from a laser.

Things that are harder to do with a Laser: Accurate 3D relief or pocket cuts where you want to have a nice shape cut out x depth but not all the way through. Example you want to gut a gauge plate with a lip on it. You can do the g-code and use the right cutting bit on CNC machine, where on a laser you would have a really hard time dialing in the power and engrave to git a nice smooth pocket cut out.

Gadroc.. I want your panels. Who can we make them mine?..lol but seriously!

Another quick laser cutter update. I noticed last night that the panels where not coming out square. The upper edge of a square was offset to the left. I took a closer look and sure enough the X arm was angled so the laser cutter was closer to the front when moved all the way to the left. I pulled the whole x/y gantry out and finally figured out what was wonky. There are belts on both sides of the Y movement and when they but the bracket on the right side they screwed up the belt. It was two or three teeth off from the left side which pulled the right side of the X arm towards the front of the machine. I disassembled that side and got it straightened out. Again for those considering the cheap laser make sure you're ready to fix little things like this.

Caution Panel

Next up is working on my caution panel. Again many thanks to pibldr for inspiring me. I've drawn up my own panel this time, but the green acrylic and design are cribbed from his posts. Here you can see the parts I've cut out to make it.

Top Left - Backplate which holds the LEDs, bolts the panel to the console and bolts the standoffs that hold the electronics. 1/16th Black Translucent Acrylic

Top Middle - Light grid spacer. This gives some distance from the LEDs and the diffuser panel to help get a bigger lighted area. 1/8th Black Translucent Acrylic

Top Right - Diffuser bezel. This surrounds the diffuser panel preventing light leak. 1/16th Black Translucent Acrylic

Bottom Left - Diffuser panel. Diffuses the LED light from a point light so the full text can be read. 1/16th White Translucent Acrylic

Bottom Middle - Indicator Grid. This lets me align the indicators better as well as helps stop light leak between indicators. 1/16th Black Translucent Acrylic

Bottom Right- Bezel and Indicators Light Plates. Surrounds the grid and brings the bezel up to the same height as the indicator. Indicator Light plates will be engraved with the indicator text. Bezel - 1/8th Black Acrylic, Indicators - 1/8th Green Transparent Acrylic

Step 1 - Glue Diffuser plate into diffuser bezel.

Step 2 - Glue grid onto diffuser

Step 3 & 4 - Glue Bezel onto of diffuser bezel and grid and glue indicators into grid. Glue spacer onto backplate.

Once the glue dries I will mask off the backplate/spacer and paint the interior silver to act as a reflector for the LEDs to shine through the diffuser and indicator. I will also paint the indicator/bezel piece black and then engrave the indicator text through the black paint. Hopefully I'll be able to get that done this evening after work.

Hey the Partridge family called and they want their clothes back that you are using as a drop cloth!

Very nice Gadroc!

Agggh... Getting paint down in all those crevasses = not fun!

it's look like you having fun.

great work.

I got the caution panel finished from a fabrication stand point last night.

Here is the backplate after painting.

And here is the faceplate after painting and then after engraving.

And finally here it is with a few indicators lit. Sorry it's a little fuzzy. I'll try and retake one tonight, but it's hard to get my phone to focus on the lit areas.

Tonight I have to solder another 32 LEDs and mount the Phidgets board on the standoffs.