Stuff you have made today

[jmp49]

The third prototype of "an Art".

An artist friend approached me to help with an installation they are building for a festival to look like an alien rainforest.

After a lot of prototyping, the best solution was to buy glow in the dark golf balls from AliBaba in bulk, and make a jig to drill them with a 1mm through hole on the lathe, string them on monofilament, and hang from a net.

That approach has shaved about £3.5k off the cost estimate for his original approach, but we do have thousands of balls to drill with a 46×D hole, plus tie onto monofilament and wrap onto yarn cards.

Next step is working out an aesthetically congruous way to pulse UV onto them to keep them illuminated, to avoid having to keep several thousand watts of UV lights on all the time.

Could string them on glow in the dark 3d filament, then the string will glow too. Or use it to print random weird alien plant things out to break up the balls. I printed a lot of 3d glow in the dark stuff for my kids in the early days of 3dp, it glows for a few hours without recharge and at one point I had a single uv tube which charged them back up and covered fair sized room for 36w.

For the drilling, think I'd weld hinges & toggle latches to keep them closed on two bits of angle iron and pour balls in, latch then drill them in batches. Drill guide bushing at one end and a long drill bit...

 

[chunkytfg]

Finally got my new gate installed and the sliding driveway gate is coming along. few bits still to do before paint but getting there

 

[Kram]

Leylandii jungle I was re topping, very wide and hard to throw the tops!

Then on the way home I saw these ladders and a bowsaw. The second ladder was sideways against the limb. Looked like it would end badly, I had to stop!
Old guy, working on his own, wanted to raise it up from the driveway, I assume he was going to take the whole limb and likely would have knocked him to the ground.

I had my 4m pole stick with me and got all of the lower stuff, 5 min job so I didnt charge him, but he insisted on beer money.

Theres lots of significant diameter deadwood hanging over he garage, so gave him our details if he wants that done in future.

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

Could string them on glow in the dark 3d filament, then the string will glow too. Or use it to print random weird alien plant things out to break up the balls. I printed a lot of 3d glow in the dark stuff for my kids in the early days of 3dp, it glows for a few hours without recharge and at one point I had a single uv tube which charged them back up and covered fair sized room for 36w.

We did some on glow in the dark monofilament, but it just didn't achieve the initial effect they were aiming for, using clear filament the balls just appear to float there.

Whether to add vegetation is a question and the glowing filament makes sense then...

We are clear that 3D printing is too slow and far too expensive for the scale* required, even though we collectively have access to about 11 printers.

We are talking several thousand of these dangling balls, for an installation which will last 5 days, and may get re-used 2-3 times tops, and tests with flower or leaf type attachments indicate that we would need about 5 pieces of vegetation per dangly ball, to look right.

Buying direct from the far east in bulk you can get fabric artificial flowers for like 4.5 pence each...

So we want to add more plant like decorations we will buy odd looking fake flowers or fruits from AliExpress, then take them to a mate's booth to spray them with Glow in the dark in batches, and then my mate can airbrush or hand paint on contrasting colours of glow in the dark for details at his leisure.


As a side note, the double entendres have been coming thick and fast with this project...

Initially with drilling balls, then trying to work out how floppy a shaft can be before it won't go in [to the ground], then on this iteration with all the dangly/pendulous/twisted balls.

For the drilling, think I'd weld hinges & toggle latches to keep them closed on two bits of angle iron and pour balls in, latch then drill them in batches. Drill guide bushing at one end and a long drill bit...

We tried various jigs and drilling with a pillar drill or mill, but it's just nowhere near as fast as the lathe.

Slip over soft jaws with a taper widening towards the back, and the ball centering by being seated on the edge of the through hole in the 3 Jaw Chuck works very well for work holding.

Process is to:
- chuck a ball,
- take a peck with a small spotting drill in the tailstock,
- move the carriage drilling attachment up to its stop,
- drill the full hole in one continuous run with the carriage feed until the stop kicks it out,
- back out,
- gently brush the drill,
- next ball.

I think the cycle time is around 25 seconds a ball at this point, and most of that is chucking and waiting for the clutch/spindle break.

We discovered the balls we bought are just the right kind of hardness that a quick spiral extra long parabolic drill (why I have one in 1mm I don't know, but thanks Grandad!) can do the full hole in a single go at very high RPM.

If we do break the drill bit, a replacement will be POA from Drill Service Horley, but even if they wanted £50 for it, then it would pay for itself inside an hour in time savings (I still price my time in line with my hourly charge out at work, even though this is making art, not environmental engineering or public policy).

If he goes the the largest scale we have discussed, (a hexagon with a 20m inscribed diameter...) It will still take over 24 hrs work to prepare all the balls.

The budget for the installation is somewhat flexible, but given the sheer scale we need to keep every single cost on a tight leash.



I quite enjoy working with artists, there's a tremendous sense of fun and clarity of vision, and they inevitably bring stuff that needs weird problem solving, and clever production/cost engineering.

 

[RichardM]

Bought some polyeutathane bar from AliExpress to make some chain roller bushes for the bike. Knocked up a quick boring tool from some old brass tube.

Parted to length with my new "blade holder".



some nylatron bushes for the centres.

 

[badabec]

Do they glow in the dark?

 

[RichardM]

There are four now! Edited as I don't think Badabec was talking about my bushes glowing!

 

[MattF]

There are four now! Edited as I don't think Badabec was talking about my bushes glowing!View attachment 501109

A glowing bush. Now there's a thought.

 

[RWD3M]

A glowing bush. Now there's a thought.

Oh dear.

 

[Gragson]

Oh dear.

Ginger Mi.... sorry

 

[RWD3M]

Ginger Mi.... sorry

Oh you're going straight to hell!

 

[Dozzer]

Ginger Mi.... sorry

how do you know he has, you been looking!

 

[oldbikedavey]

Considerable inroads on the functionality of the Holdridge Radii Turning Attachment.
Needs a bit of centre height reduction , but as it now is bolted down on 5/16" raising plates on the Colchester compound slide, that's an 'easy' wangle with some 1/4" gauge plate substitutes..
Did a first cut on a chunk of aluminium this afternoon, and it certainly works beautifully well....
Proper pleased with that one.....

 

[Blue Chips]

I just finished installing my full-rise scissor car lift in the new garage. Parts of the user manual that came with the lift were almost undecipherable, but the seller was very helpful and promptly answered my questions about all of the specs that I needed.

It's working great, and the quality appears to be quite decent. It’s a full-rise lift, which will allow me to stand up under my spouse's car, as well as my 1954 Dodge M37 (IF the top and windshield are folded down). With a taller vehicle like my F-150, I won’t be able to lift it quite all the way up, so I’ll have to stoop a bit when working under it, or else sit on a tall stool. The garage ceiling height is 11 feet, and the top of the lift platform will rise up to about 6 feet above the floor, leaving around 5 feet to the ceiling. The ramps at the end of the platforms can be locked in a flat position to extend the platform surface.

The yellow air compressor in the photo is doing temporary duty. I'm looking for a small wall-mount compressor to save floor space. An air compressor is only used to operate the safety pawls on the lift. The hydraulic pump for the lift is inside the control console. My other garage (serving as my shop) has a 60-gallon plumbed-in compressor, and I might eventually install such a unit in the new garage at some point, but other things are higher on the to-do list.

I’m hoping to take my M37 out of the overpriced storage unit and bring it home within the next week or two. I'm looking forward to doing the chassis work on the lift instead of lying on my back or bending over.

 

[Bki26]

Give the boring job to the lazy guy and he'll find the easiest way

Since this Chinese lathe is pretty floppy I'm able to use that flaw so I can part the thread off flush without it taking the whole face off because the whole thing flexes under load when using the sharp taper inserts at speed with the drill.

https://imgur.com/l50XgzM

https://imgur.com/na6oYOY

Got the whole bag to do but it's certainly quick enough with the radio on.

 

[iNf]

Why did you order threaded thumbscrews if you don't want the threads?

 

[Bki26]

Why did you order threaded thumbscrews if you don't want the threads?

Because that's the only way I could get these magnetic 8x6mm straight knurled cylinders in a cost effective manner, custom ones would probably be 10x more and take longer than an afternoon at the lathe.

It's m3x5mm so takes no effort to quickly remove, I'm processing one thumbscrew every 10-15s depending on how good the song playing is

 

[sako243]

I made a big bit of steel from, I think it was @hotponyshoes, into some smaller bits.

Then turned bits of it into swarf...

Then used one of @8ob's freebies to start boring out the centre. This piloted MT2 drill was beautiful at taking a chunk out the centre.

Next issue is how to fit this big 44.4mm drill bit which is possibly a sort of MT4 into an MT3 tailstock... Too big to fit down the bore of the lathe and can't hold it nicely to turn down the shank to MT3.

Perhaps should just sort out a decent boring bar. The tooling I have so far is much too big. Will have to have a scavenge to see if there's something I can grind down from the treasures Bob gave me.

 

[Kram]

Next issue is how to fit this big 44.4mm drill bit which is possibly a sort of MT4 into an MT3 tailstock... Too big to fit down the bore of the lathe and can't hold it nicely to turn down the shank to MT3.

Weld up a mt4 adaptor to a spare toolpost holder.

 

[sako243]

Weld up a mt4 adaptor to a spare toolpost holder.

What spare tool post holders...

I'm going to see if I can chuck it up in the 4 jaw when that job comes out of it and turn the shank down to an MT3.