This is the first time I'll be doing anything substantial with 304, so I expect to learn a few things. It's for a project I can't talk about yet. I need to knurl, face, and part it. I think the lathe is up to it, so we'll see if my skills are, too.

We had an unfortunate incident at Nova Labs: a job got away from the user on "Big Blue", the 4x8 CNC router. I helped out with the repairs on it and on the other large CNC machine this weekend. I didn't get any pictures of the repairs (I'm still working on remembering to take more pictures), so here are some pictures of the damage instead.

The Onefinity Elite that our robotics team was so generously gifted behaves like a lot of smaller CNC machines: when you e-stop it, the steppers lose power and you lose your position. You can re-home it and it should resume pretty nicely, but that adds a bunch of time. I much prefer a different rule: no hands in the working envelope of the machine unless it is made safe. Having that be the e-stop is great, but not available here.

I figured out that the Masso controller has an input we can configure as a door sensor. When it's open, the controller holds motion and stops the spindle. So I'm going to rig up a switch we can flip when we're adjusting the work or cleaning up. The kids flip it to "hold", do their work on the table, then re-arm the system by flipping it back to "run".

The first piece is the housing, a 3D printed case that holds a two-position switch.

With the case done, I just need to get some wires hooked up to it and reconfigure the controller to use it.

I think one of the best habits we can give the kids is a strict safety environment. Nova Labs is, sadly, pretty lax at times. I routinely walk through the shops and see people without safety glasses on, which in my opinion is the bare minimum precaution people should be taking.

This is just a fun little nugget I picked up on Amazon. You can see it here. It's poorly made, but accurate to within about 0.010"/0.2mm, which is good enough for a lot of what I do. It will live in my pocket, so it being a bit of a piece of junk is fine. Maybe some day I'll make a nicer one.

That's permanent marker in the marks: the lines were basically unreadable to my aged eyes. I'm also very amused by the "two quarters" fractional label.

I had to do more work at the town home we rent out. Part of it was fixing the dishwasher install that I screwed up (the hose clamp wasn't tight enough). The other part was installing a new thermostat, since the old one had failed. Pretty easy, really, although I will note that ChatGPT saved me from wiring it wrong. Crazy times.

A friend came over today to work on cutting some nickel strips for some battery work he's doing. We decided to try the M3. It worked pretty well, but as usual I forgot to take enough pictures.

We also tried the G2, but it wound up heat-distorting the metal a lot, and it was very slow besides. I guess that's not surprising: 30 W vs. 1,200 W.

I didn't have all the fittings I need for the nitrogen tank yet, so we weren't able to try it. There was a bit of oxidation at the edges of the cut, and the nitrogen should help with that. We'll have to try again some other time.

I got the nitrogen hooked up. I cut something fairly small (can't talk about the project yet). And used like $50 worth of nitrogen. Yikes! Looks like I'll be sticking with compressed air most of the time.