Craig Andera

Dust Boot and Spoilboard Inserts on the FRC Router

Last night our main accomplishments on the FRC Onefinity router were getting the Onefinity Suckit Dust Boot installed, doing a bunch of test runs, and then finally starting to use the router to bore holes in the spoilboard to accept threaded inserts for workholding. Here are some pictures of the setup, and a short video of the machine pocketing the spoilboard. The big picture. I like the Masso controller. "Suckit" is a pretty good name for a dust shoe. Here's some video of the machine in action. ...

The Site Now Lives at www

More site work, this time at the DNS level. The site's address is now www.craigandera.org. Everything else — craigandera.org, craigandera.com, and www.craigandera.com — permanently redirects to the same page on www.craigandera.org. I did this mostly so that the bare craigandera.org is free to hold other things later, and so I can hang other subdomains off it without a fuss. What this means for you: nothing, if all goes well. Old links and bookmarks to any of those names still land on the right page, including the RSS feeds. I tested all four names, with paths and query strings, so I'm reasonably confident. ...

Metal Monday and the Six-Jaw Chuck

The Vevor six-jaw chuck, taken apart for deburring and cleanup. Last night I attended Nova Labs "Metal Monday", which I do most weeks if robotics isn't too demanding. It's the metal shop's office hours. People can drop by (or, ideally, sign up in advance) to get advice, project help, or just chat. We almost always get a few people stopping by, with any variety of busted tools, interesting things they're working on, and ideas to discuss. One of these was how I got involved with the Hunter Ranch sign. ...

Done Backfilling the Projects

I think I'm done backfilling the projects. I've added quite a few over the last few days, and improved tagging. So there's quite a bit there to explore. There's even more stuff I could have added (I'm totally ignoring software, for instance) but at some point enough is enough. I'm not even totally clear on who I'm doing this for. Me, I guess? Anyway, maybe you'll see something you enjoy, or even better, that inspires you. Go check out the Projects area of the site.

More Work on the Nova Labs Renovation

I didn't show any pictures last time of the newly vacated space. It's already looking incredibly improved, although of course if you didn't see it when it was crowded with all of SunDog's equipment you have nothing compare it to. Still, here are two shots from the center of the space, one facing each direction. The newly vacated space, shot from the center of the room. The newly vacated space, shot from the center of the room, facing the other direction. There are a couple other, smaller spaces that I'll have to take pictures of some other day. ...

Backfilling the Projects

I've been going back through my old photos and (with AI help) populating the Projects section. So if you looked at it a few days ago, there are a lot more things there now. Maybe some will be of interest to you. I'm still adding more. There's an RSS feed if you want to follow it that way.

Gallery Merged Into Projects

I did some site work today. I realized that "gallery" and "projects" were basically the same thing, so I merged them; now there's just projects. I apologize to the zero people whom this impacts through broken links or RSS feeds. I'll probably break more stuff as I go. Since this whole thing is for me, I feel confident the user base won't mind.

Clearing Out the SunDog Space

More work on the SunDog space renovation. Yesterday was mostly cleanup — a bunch of us going through what SunDog left behind and sorting it out. I spent most of the day driving the forklift, hauling some one big pieces of equipment over to the metal recycling dumpster. Only the one photo from the day, but I did get a bit of video (courtesy Heather, my forklift mentor) of the forklift in action moving a particularly large piece: ...

Hello, world

Welcome to the new site. This replaces years of good intentions and zero follow-through with an actual place to write things down — mostly what I'm building in the shop, but really whatever seems worth recording. I have two older sites - my old Blogger site and getsmarterandmakestuff.com - but they're both hosted sites that don't give me the control I want. This site hopefully will work more the way I think about projects. ...