cnc machining the new mac book

the new macbook milled from a block of solid aluminum
http://gizmodo.com/5063227/how-the-macbooks-are-carved-out-of-solid-aluminum

http://boards.core77.com/viewtopic.php?t=16970

Precision Aluminum Unibody Enclosure

Every MacBook starts its life as a solid piece of aluminum. Each aluminum core is precisely machined into the basic unibody design. Another pass and the unibody takes shape. Another, and the integrated keyboard emerges. It takes multiple CNC milling operations to create the complete MacBook unibody.

Precision Aluminum Unibody Enclosure

Every MacBook starts its life as a solid piece of aluminum. Each aluminum core is precisely machined into the basic unibody design. Another pass and the unibody takes shape. Another, and the integrated keyboard emerges. It takes multiple CNC milling operations to create the complete MacBook unibody.

Precision Aluminum Unibody Enclosure

Every MacBook starts its life as a solid piece of aluminum. Each aluminum core is precisely machined into the basic unibody design. Another pass and the unibody takes shape. Another, and the integrated keyboard emerges. It takes multiple CNC milling operations to create the complete MacBook unibody.

problem with Fanuc A14B-0067-B001 power supplies

I acquired several Fanuc A14B-0067-B001 power supplies, and
they all seem to have a similar problem, which I haven’t been able to
track down yet. When you power them up, the +5VDC on the terminal strip
is OK, but the +24VDC is very low to non-existent. The -15VDC is at
about -11V, and the +15VDC is very low, or non-existent. If I cycle
the supply a few times it might start working perfectly. Perfectly,
except for the slight “sizzling” sound coming from somewhere. Possibly
after the main transformer T14. Has anyone seen this erratic behavior?

answer:

if this is a linear power supply the filter capacitors are probably shot and short circuiting
internally. Hence the sizzle sound. Transformers are generally the last things to fail.

CNC Pumpkin Carving

buy CNC related books and tools

OK, This is a little late but still cool, though just in time to make me hungry for the pumpkin pie i’ll be having on thursday.  How do hardware geeks carve pumpkins?  With giant home made CNC mills, that’s how. Using the open source CNC kit from Lumenlab.com, they converted a photograph into g-code, which can be automated and done in photoshop, it was then then fed it to the machine, taking only 20 minutes of milling to create this awesome 2D carving.  cant wait for that pumpkin pie this thanksgiving

What are the differences or advantages/ disadvantages of dc brushed, dc brushless or ac servomotors?

Question:
I would like to upgrade / retrofit my CNC Series 1 boss 5 to servo base gecko drive mach3 machine. What are the differences or advantages and disadvantages of dc brushed, dc brushless or ac servomotors?

Answer:

First, Gecko drives will only run brush-type motors. Brushless motors have no commutator or brushes, so they need less maintenance. But, also, the brushless motors have the windings epoxied into the housing, where the heat can escape, while brush motors have all the windings (read – heat generation) in the rotor, therefore the heat has a REALLY hard time getting out. Also, iron and copper are heavier, by a lot, that rare-earth magnets, so the brushless motor has a lighterrotor — less inertia.

When talking about common servo motors, there is no distinction between DC brushless and AC, pretty much ALL servo motors are permanent magnet rotor, 3-phase stator motors. There are some special systems using flux vector drives to employ AC induction motors for servo purposes, but you are quite unlikely to run into one of those.

DC brush motors are VERY standard, if you can obtain the Kv and Kt ratings of the motor (Kv is volts/1000 RPM, Kt is your favorite unit of torque per Amp) and the peak and continuous current rating, you have everything you need for servo drive selection, proper drive ratio matching, etc.

Brushless motors add another whole layer of complexity. The alignment between the commutation encoder and the motor windings is not standard across all brands, and some makers like Yaskawa have proprietary encoder schemes. Others have no commutation encoder at all, and the drive needs to be programmed to know the encoder resolution. Some brushless motors handle 6-step commutation fine, others humm LOUDLY at certain speeds, and need to be driven by sinusoidal drive waveforms to avoid that.

To sum up, if you want to use a brand-name brushless motor with drives sold by that company, everything will work fine. If you want to mix and match servo motors and drives off eBay, you’d better be a motors guru!

what is the best antivirus solution, for CNC machine connected to the internet.

what OS and virus issues are optimal for my CNC machine.

Answer:

thanks to my readers for contributing their thoughts and suggestions on this solution.

Virus programs look for a specific bite sequence say 12-14-18-99 to identify a virus. These codes are like a plan where 12 = go to the store, 14 fix breakfast, etc. If you rewrite the code so that you fix breakfast first then the store, you have a totally different program undetectable to any virus program. There’s it is quite simple if you have the code. Swap a line or too and bingo you’ve got a totally different program.In order to find a virus the program has to know that you have one. Each company finds different ones at different times. Say today I’m McAfee and I found 3 but Avast might have located 3 totally different or even 3 of the same just different strands. It might be a week and it might never happen when all 6 are detected by both programs. So I watch my computer speed, task manager and memory usage, test with 3-5 antivirus different programs most of the time once a month.  Spybot search and destroy particularly is a good program to invest your memory usage in to run it all the time because it will alert you each time a change to the registry is about to be made.An interesting trick is CTRL-ALT-DELETE and when the screen comes up press print screen. Then load a paint program and paste the results then save. Also run regedit and search for runonce. Check in runonce and everything in the run direcory above it. I know all programs that are loaded. That catches most bugs but there are some that are allot smarter than that.

Also check the Run Folders in Regedit and delete anything that is not supposed to be there these won’t harm your machine, as these are the programs that run at startup. 1) My office machine (XP) runs the CAD/CAM, and post and the file goes to flash after it’s been tested in a virtual mill.This machine has no AV since it’s backed up and I don’t want the penalty hit, but that’s up to the individuals preference.

AntiVir, AVG, Ad Aware, Spybot S&D, and AVAST are all good Free AntiVirus programs. If you are using McAfee supplied by Cox Cable I would suggest getting it off your computer as fast as possible. I used CA security software for almost 10 years. The last 2 years it was free with Cox Cable until they switched to McAfee without even telling their customers. I do have all my CNC systems on the net (that server is also the firewall, with two net adapters on it). I send the G-code files back and forth from my main desktop, and also back up anything I want to keep from the CNC machines at the desktop. There is plenty of web server software for Linux. With the possible exception of EMC, what’s available for CNC control? What do the Heidenhains and Faucs of the world use? Could any of us even afford their stuff? I’m guessing not?Most of those “name brand” controls are quite proprietary, although some may have Windows or something under them for net and floppy connectivity. (I know Bridgeport Ez-Trak runs on Windows.) EMC is not a “possible” exception.

Most (over 99%) home and small business users are behind a nat connection using some form of xdsl (cable modems are a form of xdsl). This cuts down on 99.9xx % of all possible hack-in attempts. That why the windows boxes stay lice-free If you put a straight connection ie direct routed ip connection to a windows box, it is almost always possible to break in to a windows box. Automated scripts that scan all ip address spaces run continuously, and will enter the windows box and set up a backdoor of some kind. Average break-in time to a windows box directly hooked up to the net is under 10 minutes, as was said.The exchange servers etc and web servers usually use a routed port to allow external connections. A direct routed connection is rare, unless you have public server (rare) and a direct T1 line or better.If an exchange server is compromised, chances are You would not know it. Zonelarm, McAfee and most antivirus software will not see any of the good hacks, because there are so many variations with virus’s and antivirus software only recognizes trojans that they have logged in their database. as stated before it only takes a little tweaking to make a completely new virus. Really good break-ins use private rootkits. McAfee etc commercial stuff will not detect these, as the exact root-kit is private and has never been seen my McAfee, Norton, etc. They wont have the check sums. Using an app called process explorer can help with tracking down the dll and other files that are the cause of the virus, if you have a file that you can not delete, besides downloading unlocker. this is the best you can do.

One of the most the most effective thing to do is for your router to direct ports to different PC’s on your network.  Only a few ports should be allowed, all others should be blocked. (Verified by a couple of free outside scanning services) Use filter/watchdog software on the server that detects situations on the Exchange server that should not be happening. (IE Hacks) A few years back on my friends server a few strange things occurred. It was probably hacked, the software was corrupted, and it had to be reloaded. However the server software knew that something was wrong. Reloading the PC and applying some newer Exchange updates fixed those problems and started throwing errors.  All of this can run as part off the shelf MS software. MS Exchange and IIS are fairly solid. Use a router, putting a PC directly on the net without a router. Is like parking a car in NYC with the keys in it and wondering why it was stolen? Your router is your first line of defense in antivirus and acts as the most effective type of firewall. Some may say thinking Linux is necessary to run a server or CNC successfully on the net, this is not necessarily true is nonsense Coldwellbanker.com and NFL.com are both runningon standard MS server software. The MS software does the job. The downside is that it is not free. The upside is that it is pretty easy to configure.

Getting your CNC online

Although in theory hooking up CNC machines to a network should streamline the manufacturing process, as well as provide operators and manufacturers with a fast way to communicate with each other and directly with the machine, several issues may need to be addressed. Very few CNC machines come with built in Ethernet capabilities. Instead they continue to be manufactured with RS-232 ports, and those that do come with optional Ethernet ports don’t appear to work well with even simple connectivity options—instead of making the most of the ability to link with other machines, the Ethernet port is simply being used to download programs and store them on the machine.

If CNC machines use Ethernet to assert their presence in a network, much like a computer, possibilities begin to take shape. An operator could communicate directly with the machine and get necessary feedback regarding programming or processing errors. The is already an increasing demand for CNC machines to be made Ethernet ready so they can appear on a company-wide network, and, ultimately, the internet.

Current Solutions

Despite the fact that many manufacturers work with older R2-232 connected machines, it is still possible to connect these machines to the internet. Modern Machine Shop Online (hyperlink: http://www.mmsonline.com/article.aspx?id=13808) offers the following three tips for making older machines Ethernet-ready:

1.      Using a PC that is already connected to the internet, run an RS-232 cable to the PC RS-232 port.

2.      To connect multiple CNC machines, run RS-232 cables to a switchbox that is connected to an internet-active PC

3.      Connect directly to a network by using an RS-232 cable to connect to an Ethernet-to-RS-232 converter—then connect the converter to a PC that is actively connected to the network or internet, or connect the converter directly to the network.

Bomb Proof Honey Comb Tires

A new tire has been developed to withstand blasts by IED’s in Iraq, made by Resilient Technologies, LLC, based in Wausau, Wisc. and the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Polymer Engineering Center. With a four-year, $18-million grant from the Pentagon,  they are now working to create a “non-pneumatic tire” (NPT) technology, the name comes from the fact that it doesn’t require air.  The tire is made using hexagon patterns a pattern that often turns up in nature because architecturally it is the strongest geometric shape that can be created.  The angles distribute pressure in such a way that makes it the strongest structure for building. Resilient says it’s too early to say how much the tires will cost or even which polymers they’re using, because they’re still in the prototype phase. (The company installed a set of 37-inch (94-centimeter) NPTs on a Wausau-based National Guard Humvee to test them in April.) Although the military is hoping to put these tires in use as soon as possible. You would have to completely destroy the tire to stop these. The article mentions that this isn’t the first of its kind. Michelin has made the “tweel” before this, sorry guys there are no plans for consumer versions right now.