CNC made close up lens filter holder

Close up filters attach to the end of a camera lens and allow you to take photos closer to the subject than you normally would have been able to do. This is very handy for electronics and other work as you can get clear images of circuit boards and other small detail. I recently got a collection of 3 such filters which didn't come with any sort of real holder, the container they shipped in was not really designed for longer term use.

The above is the starting design for a filter holder cut in layers from walnut and stacked together to create the enclosure. The inside is shown below where the outer diameter can hold the 80mm black ring and the inner circles are 70mm and are there to keep the filters from touching each other. Close up filters can be quite fish eyed looking with a substantial curve to the lens on the filter, so a gap is needed to keep each filter away from the next one. A little felt is used to cushion the filter from the walnut itself which adds roughly 1.5mm to the design so the felt layer all have space to live as well.

The bottom has little feet which extend slightly beyond the tangent of the circle so they both make good contact with the ground and there is no rocking. Using two very cheap hinges works well in this design to try to minimize the sideways movement (slop) in the hinges themselves. A small leather strap will finish the enclosure off allowing it to be secured closed.

It is wonderful to be able to turn something like this around. I can only imagine what the world looks like from the perspective of somebody who is used to machining with 5 axis CNC.

Ikea wireless charger in CNC mahogany case

I notice that Ikea sell their wireless chargers without a shell for insertion into desks. The "desk" I chose is a curve cut profile in mahogany that just happens to have the same fit as an LG G3/4/5 type phone. The design changed along the way to a more upright one which then required a catch to stop the phone sliding off.

This was done in Fusion360 which allows bringing in STL files of things like phones and cutting those out of another body. It took a while to work out the ball end toolpath but I finally worked out how to get something that worked reasonably well. The chomps in the side allow fingers to securely lift the phone off the charger.

It will be interesting to play with sliced objects in wood. Layering 3D cuts to build up objects that are 10cm (or about 4 layers) tall.

CNC Alloy Candelabra

While learning Fusion 360 I thought it would be fun to flex my new knowledge of cutting out curved shapes from alloy. Some donated LED fake candles were all the inspiration needed to design and cut out a candelabra. Yes, it is industrial looking. With vcarve and ball ends I could try to make it more baroque looking, but then that would require more artistic ability than a poor old progammer might have.

It is interesting working out how to fixture the cut for such creations. As of now, Fusion360 will allow you to put tabs on curved surfaces, but you don't get to manually place them in that case. So its a bit of fun getting things where you want them by adjusting other parameters.

Also I have noticed some issues with tabs on curves where exact multiples of layer depth align perfectly with the top of the tab height. Making sure that case doesn't happen makes sure the resulting undesired cuts don't happen. So as usual I managed to learn a bunch of stuff while making something that wasn't in my normal comfort zone.

The four candles are run of a small buck converter and wired in parallel at 3 volts to simulate the batteries they normall run of.

I can feel a gnarled brass candle base coming at some stage to help mitigate the floating candle look. Adding some melted real wax has also been suggested to give a more real look.

Non self replicating reprap 3d printer

The reprap is designed to be able to "self replicate" to a degree. If a part on a reprap 3d printer breaks then a replacement part can be printed and attached. Parts can evolve as new ideas come along. Having parts crack or weaken on a 3d printer can be undesirable though.

A part on this printer was a mix of acrylic and PLA, both of which were cracked. Not quite what one would hope for as a foot of the y-axis. It is an interesting design with the two driving rods the same length as the alloy channel at the back of the printer.

A design I thought of called for 1/2 inch alloy in order to wrap the existing alloy extrusion with a 3mm cover. The dog bone on the slot is manually added in Fusion 360 so it is larger than needed. The whole thing being a learning exercise for me as to how to create 2.5D parts. The belt tensioning is on a 6mm subassembly that is mounted on the bracket in the right of the image below.

The bracket and subassembly are shown mounted below. Yes, using four M6 bolts to tension a belt is overkill. I would imagine you can stretch the belt to breaking point quite easily with these bolts. The two rods are locked into place using M3 tapped grub screws. The end brackets are bolted to the back extrusion using two M6 bolts.

The z-axis is now supported by a second 10mm alloy custom bracket. This combination makes it much, much harder to wobble the z-axis than the original design using plastic parts.