For creating books with images that go off the page, export the file from inDersign as (from the “File > Adobe PDF Presets” menu) PDF/X-1a:2001. In the “Marks and Bleeds” menu of the PDF Export, check off the “Use Document Bleed Settings” check box.
In the createspace environment select “Bleed ends after the edge of page”
Needing to do some text in CATIA, I came up with this:
http://www.engineering.com/CATIACommunity/CATIAForum/view/topic/postid/91/forumid/25/tpage/1.aspx
Unfortunately there is no straight forward way to do text withing the part modeler directly. Oh well, but this got the job done.
In designing some components I was interested to figure out what the limitations were of the printer, and figure out how it behaves when the printed part deviates from the cad model.
My first concern was how thin a wall the printer could print at different slice thicknesses, so I made a test part that integrated short pieces of different thickness wall sections. Continue reading
I’ve noticed that the file transfer speeds from my workstation computer have been on the slow side. Today I started doing some file read/write in order to benchmark what is possible on my network and eventually try to maintain similar transfer rates between all computers. Continue reading
I’ve had 3D printing on the brain for the past few weeks for some reason. I’ve been thinking about putting together a kit 3d printer to get started. I was thinking how I would like a relatively large work area (not the small limited 6″ or 8″ cubed that a lot of the cheaper printers provide.
Then last evening it came to me. The light bulb came on.
Use the milling machine as the printer! Just get a print head, and control it from the existing software (Mach3). The work area is huge, and the cost should be quite reasonable since I only need the extruding head. Between a good quality plastruder, and a temperature control board, it should be about $250 ($170 for the plastruder, stepper motor driver and $60 or so for the temp control board)
Feed speeds of a makerbot are around 40mm/s (2400mm/min). Currently I can do about 1000mm/min on my milling machine (which is 1/2 of the makerbot speeds) but with a ballscrew upgrade I should be able to do about 5000mm/min feed speeds (83mm/sec).
I have read about some kit 3D printers (like the Ultimaker) that can do 200-300 mm/sec feeds (12,000-18,000mm/min). I know my mill will never go that fast.
Mach3 as 3dprinter software (here)
Good info on whats required in order to use Mach3 as the river software (here)
Looking into finding cheaper services to print my Kinetik Festival photo books I came across CreateSpace.
I think at this point of my self publishing career, this service dots all the is and crosses all the t’s for me. There are some issues with ownership of the ISBN numbers they assign, (read here), but for the most part it looks very promising.
With book printing prices as low as I’ve yet seen, an enormous distribution network (as it’s part of Amazon), and (from what I’ve read) decent quality printing, I don’t know why I would NOT go with them at least for the next photo book. I can always decide to move to a different service with future books.
I am even considering re-doing the K4 photo book into a new edition so I can print it with CreateSpace as the Blurb.com software I used limits you to using only their service to print the books.
Everything is printed on demand, shipped to the customer, and I get the royalties. Easy.
Talk about inDesign templates (here)
I’ve been spending some time thinking about a method to enclose my CNC machine.
There are lots of ideas… (pictures). (another link) (enclosure build log 01)
One key thing is that I want easy access to the CNC table so I can easily add heavy items like vices, rotary tables, etc. And the encluse needs to be somewhat modular so that I can take parts of it off in case I want to work on/service the cnc machine.
The three sides (left, right and back) will be plywood construction. That part was easy.
The chip/coolant tray was the second hardest part to figure out, but I think I have a design for that.
Thirdly is the front door to the enclosure. Since I have walls on the left and right side, the width is set. My initial thought was to make side-to-side sliding doors using full extension kitchen drawer slides. Depending on how large I wanted the opening to be, I could use either one sliding pane (per side) or two nested panes (per side) to allow more of an opening. For a door system that uses two nested doors per side, I would need 4 pairs of slides. Each pane needs 2 slides; one for a bottom track, and one for a top track.
But then I came across these Over The Top Slides. I can make the door as wide as I want, and flip it up and push it over the top in one motion. Or if one door gets too heavy, split the door into two. Only drawback is that the slider only comes in 14″ lengths, which means it can only accommodate for 14″ of travel. Continue reading
I will keep this post as a catch all post for all machining (milling, turning, CNC or otherwise)
Installing the Brother HL-2070N printer in linux (more specifically my openSUSE installations) has been an intimidating task. Until now.
I found a simple guide here. Straight to the point, 2 min install, and bam, everything is working. Thanks Andrew!
In the new house, I’d like to move to a standing workbench, and computer desk and abolish sitting except at at the dinner table to eat. So in the basement, where the workshop will be, I want to build myself a workbench, and a computer desk that is both stylish and functional. The workshop space will be shared with a small theatre space, and I’d prefer to not have 2×4 work benches if I can get away with it.
Both computer desk and workbench will be 44″-47″ tall (haven’t decided yet on a final height).
UPDATE:
– Having used the workbench, it would be useful if I could adjust the height of the table a little. The current height of about 46″ is great for detail work, but working on larger components it’s a little high. It’s hard to lift heavy objects to this height, and applying lots of force is more difficult at this height.
– For the computer bench this should be no problem as not much force is applied at this height.
– Looking for a slick method to raise and lower the table surface. Since the counter is pretty heavy, I want a method to lock the height which is also rigid (and won’t create a wonky table surface). Maybe something based on a thread and a couple of stepper motors to raise and lower the work surface??
Continue reading