Moar tool modules, yay! syncRo looks great and your robotics line is maturing to new heights of awesomeness extremely rapidly. What, you got some kind of rapid prototyping tool available or something?

Hi Grayson, is there any chance to get the bot before Valentine's Day 2010 (I ordered Gold package and then upgraded to V2 back in July)?
I was planning to produce some presents for Christmas but see that it isn't feasible anymore

This is news I've been waiting for, especially the modular aspects as the importance of a laser and other devices seem to be going up and up on the project list. The project list is getting long as well, mind you.

Is everything still supposed to be shipped by Dec. 1?

If you mean Dec 1 2011, things look good.

"Laser engraving, laser cutting, and a plotter". Man, you guys really plan to suck every dime out of me don't you . I'd like to see a 3D deposition modules first myself, something I've all ways wanted to try.

It's too quiet.... What are you guys brewing up that's keeping you away from the forums Grayson and Robin?!?

Cheers,
Gerhard

Hi Guys,

How the v2 looking? What's the estimated shipping date? Thanks,

-MM

I'm hoping to hear something soon about my request for the handbuilt "one of seven" machine...

Also, is there a drop dead date for upgrading to 19x19? Or did I just fall asleep and miss it for the current run....?

I suspect they're working very long hours trying to meet their goal of shipping all the backlogged machines by the end of the month

-Brian

Pretty much 100%...




Well...we've run into a problem. Please see below. But we are going to try to get a bunch of machines out for Christmas.



Sigh...



Check the 3DP thread. We got it running...



Hey Gerhard!



Hey Mack..see below...



It's ready, just waiting for your enclosures (electrics). We got a bit knocked off course there...



You still have time...we have extras.



Sigh, no joke!

OK the big news I was trying not to give. The shop, ETKO, that was making the bloks and screws has mysteriously disappeared!? We lost touch about 2 weeks ago when we were supposed to be receiving the parts. We've called and called, left numerous emails, even found the owner's home number and called there several times. This is a large shop that has been in business for 35 years! They have done excellent work for us in the past. For the last 2 weeks, nobody answers the phone, emails etc...leading to several possibilities:

-The owner is maimed or dead.

-The shop went under financially (too common these days!).

-Some disaster has befallen Akron.

We don't know what to think, we honestly hope everything is ok with the owner and that nothing has happened to his health, but we are forced to move ahead with the only thing we can do; make the bots in house. This has lead to a bit of a stressful scramble on this end, but we ordered the materials (again) and we'll start knocking out bots on the RoGR (again). If anyone is in or around Akron, can you please check on the status of ETKO???

This may delay shipping by about (ahem) 2 weeks. I realize that some are intolerant of additional delays; please hang in there! We also have to abandon the acrylic enclosures for off the shelf instrument enclosures for the sake of time, but I do have a few days to work on the tool modules, so the 3DP BETA may be available by ship date!

Hi Brainchild,

Thanks for the update on whats going on . Indeed that is unfortunate but its scary how many engineering shops ive seen shut down this recession , even here in NZ. The 3DP is definitely something get for mine . My attempts here with a postive displacement type syringe extruder have just resulted in an ooze fest of silicone gasket .

Does this 2 week delay apply to both the kit orders and the fully assembled bots?

I hope all works out so you guys can hit the ground running in 2010.


Thanks,
RB

Hi RB, Yes the orders are all delayed while we wait for inventory and of course, make the parts. We are extremely stressed over the whole ordeal; we had hoped to have made the 'leap' to higher volume production...the amount of work for just two of us is overwhealming.

We got the 3DP to print a shirt tonight!

Thanks for the update, just trying to plan a few things around its arrival.

Thanks for the update! Sorry to hear about the delays....maybe it's for the better and you can find another shop eager for your business - there must be lots of them these days!

On the downside, all my friends really believe that this "awesome, desktop CNC machine" is really just a figment of my imagination. No one believes me anymore that it even exists! *sigh*

Don't worry, I still have faith!

Hi Grayson, thanks for the long awaited update and sorry for the complications. I already rearranged my plans so I am ok to wait till end of January 2010 for my bot (even more if there are another complications of this sort on your side).
So don't bother with mine this year (maybe you will have more time for development of experimental attachments) but please don't forget that there was also spindle included in my order and we have 220V AC here :-)
Guys you're really great !!!

Oh man shirt is schweet guys. The 3DP could really shine when it comes to printing graphics onto prototypes. I wonder if it would have resolution to silk screen pcbs before milling?

Thanks for your patience!



It is real! You'll be very pleased. Thanks for understanding.



Thank you!



Yes! I know I can get it down to .004", maybe lower...

Alright, another bonus for everyone who has waited so long! Today I received the custom cable assemblies I had made in China... They are beauties! They will be included in all V2 orders. They are composed of heavy duty braided, stranded, trussed, large gauge 6 conductor XLR cable soldered to the incredibly rare heavy duty chrome/brass threaded 6 pin DC power jacks. I spec'd two extra pins per cable for your limit switches, and I spec'd 2 extra 6 pin jacks for any other i/o needs including home switches, extra axes, 3DP etc. The cables are 3 meters long, and the females are pigtail leads at 300mm which Robin and I wire to the amps (for assembled bots).

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

I gave Robin a bouquet

Click to view attachment

He did a little Samba dance!

Click to view attachment

He even wore one behind his ear for the evening!

Click to view attachment

You guys are too cute. BTW I like the new shop/garage.

Cute? You call that cute? That's cute?

It's the fatigue.

We are kind of contributing to this though - as Grayson says above, why get one or even 100 T-shirts printed when you can DIY it?

I'm buying this bot to do bulk work that otherwise would be a hellish job to do by hand, but I'm also going to be using it to do things that otherwise I'd be sending to a bigger machine shop.

It's not a shock that many will go bust when those foothills were already flooded - take a look at MAKE or Instructibles for examples of things that are wildly ambitious and would/should cost a fortune, done by enthusiasts and tyros, or even complete beginners. Once time becomes the thing you have plenty of, rather than money, you can spend two weeks making a widget that otherwise would cost you £200, especially if you only need one. Before you lost your job, you'd have paid a machine shop £70 for that same thing.

A lot of the rules have changed these past few months.

--
BC, good to hear that things are still progressing.

Thought provoking!

Wow, did you just describe me?!! Don't know if I should be glad I am not the only one.
Hopefully, things can only get better.

BC, thanks, I try to be thought provoking on forums full of thinkers like this one.

quad, it doesn't quite describe me, but only because I'm in a fairly good position for this recession. It does describe a lot of people around here though.

I can tell there are a lot of hopes riding on this little machine. I just want to expand my business and fab capabilities, but a lot here want a business full-stop, and see the micRo as a way to get that. LumenLab also see it as, perhaps, the saviour of their business. Sorry, rephrase. LumenLab also see it, perhaps, as the saviour of their business. Because this little thing is getting big, and will certainly continue to sell lots of units, and is probably also recession proof, so will for sure save the business.

BC, you should put an EULA in place to say that micRo owners can only make 1 copy of a micRo, for personal use. ;-)

Unfortunately, the micRo is not capable of parthenogenesis (Robin's response)

-Brian

Why electronic? mill the license agreement in to the micro base underside

Actually electronic version could be added to the online shop as a agreement before purchase.

He was wrong. I have scolded the poor pessimist, and as is my apparent role in W's and my relationship I will now rub his nose in it. Rephrase: I had always planned to put a couple micRos online to make parts for whatever wasn't economic to outsource, but now the heat is burnin' babies!

Just caught this, good one Turner! And all this time I thought you were witless.

Register the design, Trademark the name.

I just got a trademark using Legalzoom.com (founded by OJ's attorney) and it was cheap and easy but took a year.

Yes and no... I just read that article in the WSJ about opensource hardware (arduino in particular), and the creators (who sell lots of arduinos) aren't worried about someone copying their open source design, simply because they know that they will have created an improved version before the "copy cats" can catch up. Given LL's experience and constant innovation, I don't think anyone else would have a chance trying to flog micRo's in competition with you. If they do, you will have the added pleasure of showing them up with your next improved iteration. (Sort of the way apple or firefox roll when microsoft copies it's features- but maybe I'm biased?)
WSJ article

A valid point, but they are deluded - once something is "good enough" why upgrade further? I'm using a pretty old PC with a years old XP install. I can barely play games on it, let alone modern ones, and I used to be right on the bleeding edge for more power, more speed, faster CPU and RAM, etc. Now, it's fast enough. Rarely do I need the machine to move faster. Like just there, I had to wait for 10 seconds while the text caught up with my typing, but so what?

So why would I upgrade to a really fancy PC that is Ž£1000 these days? There is no point, unless it's to do bleeding edge games again. For even 150 Firefox tabs and 5 other programs, it is enough of a machine.

The physical world doesn't work like that - the 5th gen micRo will be capable of what, a tenth? If the 6th gen could do 100x better again, what odds would it make? I don't need accuracy like that, and few do. When cutting vinyl you can care less about anything beyond a half mm! Even the most accurate stuff I need is well within my hand held capabilities with a bit of messing about - I just want to automate it. Likewise PCB tracing - it's hand-doable now, but very fiddly and time-consuming.

So would I upgrade to a micRo capable of doing 10x the accuracy? Well, would you?

Another thing I was thinking whilst on the long drive home: Is there anything that cannot be copied inside a week these days?

Not quite the same...a more accurate analogy would be to carry a large, Global-first OS, rife with genius and novelty, uncompiled and entirely documented over to MS HQ so your buddy Bill can run off a few cdrs on his nifty new disc burner for you. Don't worry about the Hancocks, Bill...it's open source after all! Bill thinks to himself..."damn that hasn't happened since Stevie gave me that 'NeXt..err Longhorn disc. ;p

We handed the "goods" entirely over to a large, highly automated, well equipped shop...I've always used lawyers for contracts, this is no time to stop. If I seem paranoid, well you must consider how hard we've worked, but more importantly the cryptic disappearance of a 35yo shop? Also the crushing weight W and I feel having 80% of the labor of the next run dumped back into our humble R&D HQ.

AHEM.



You're not doing my signage!



Yep. 24/7/365, going on 4 years for micRo.

Tolerance is the allowable error in the system. Any machine requires some tolerance or the parts would seize and bind. This is just one factor, given in just one of the machine's many required specs and measurements.

Say we're building an engine, and some bores have a D tolerance of +/- .002". We take a couple measurements from each end with our inside gauges, and hastily note the "tolerance" is acceptable. Being amateurs and stopping there, we assemble the machine (say a 10krpm racing engine) and ok it to race. Now, anyone who has built enough high performance engines begins to appreciate the other aspects of spec, measurement and tolerance, as we must pay the foolish price(s) of our ignorance.. Each racing engine costs soapy about 70k and he's on his last one! Having limited funds (lost his ass on hedge funds during "Downturn 09") he hires BC on the cheap to be his mechanic.

BC is ok enough, but he's always late and too often mixes Rum and machines (in that order). BC was late and hungover on engine assembly day and rushed through the job, maybe forgetting some crap his grandpa might have told him, like never drink before assembly day!

BC mostly muttered that day too.

Off to the races!

Here is BC now, in the pits as soapy rounds corner 3, lap 8, in his lovely green ₤1,000,000 vintage racing Jaguar, blasting past the pit at 300 kmph.

In the split second of passage, BC studiously (for him) observes the car's apparent condition (soapy has promised a bottle of Cruzan Rum right after the race, but only IF they won).. BC, coincidentally sober this a.m. notices a couple of things: Exhaust looked a wee bit smoky, but wasn't it always? His eyes were usually too crossed to tell. Maybe, he mused, maybe one of the Webers was set too rich...but when soapy passed there were no flames from the pipes.

Soapy's lap time was longer by 11 seconds and radar clocked soapy at 291kmph, down 10k from the last lap, but BC was pretty sure soapy was doing that thing he does when his butt itched, and that always slowed soapy down because soapy couldn't really control his head movements when he scratched that particular itch.

Moments after soapy had passed, BC noted a oily tang in the air, reminding him of the burning castor oil smell from his early MX days...weirdly made BC quite hungry, and his mind drifted to delightful thoughts of devouring an 8pc Chickn McNuggets, even though they always made him feel sick.

While rummaging about looking for a rag to wipe some weird new oily mist off of his glasses, BC inadvertently trips over a carboy of high octane methanol, causing a nasty spill of several gallons...BC is bright enough to know this is bad, but soapy rounds corner 3, lap 9 at that moment, and BC hurries to his post, his mind turning from one alcohol to another..."I'll clean it up in a minute", he thought....

BC, back on post, saw that soapy was on pole; that was good since soapy needed to win the ₤250k purse or he'd have to quit racing, in debt, like about 1/2 of the other racers had to do. Squinting, BC could tell something was a little wrong...soapy's car would occasionally misfire, and it sounded to be running low on oil by the clicky-noises, but heck, that could be cam timing, a plug wire or pre-ignition problem...AHA, ignition timing..that must be it!! BC thought, reveling in his certain genius (despite his mother having told him once "I regret you"). Corner 3 radar showed soapy had lost another 10kph from his top speed, but BC was ON IT BABIES, dashing for the pit flag to signal the soapsters in. (BC could sometimes be surprisingly active on the rare occasions when he "knew" he was right, and this silly little problem was PRACTICALLY ALREADY FIXED...

Rushing to retrieve the pit flag from the pit floor, BC hardly noted that the pit flag was soaking under a pool of methanol. He didn't have time for trivialities; he was here to win! At the wall, BC paused for just a moment to ponder his own motives, and was surprised to have the thought to himself "I'd do this even without the post-race bottle bonus; I'm here to win, I deserve to win...and he felt really good for a second.

Well, that was a very amusing read, but I'm not sure what to take from it?

My point was that the average person won't be upgrading to a newer micRo unless the old one stops working well. And if someone copies the latest 10th capable micRo, but not too well, so it is only good to 5 thou, but it is half the price, then a lot of folks will buy the cheaper one, not knowing that it is crappy fit and finished, and that the claimed half thou is in fact 5 thou. And, because they've put it together themselves, there will be no comeback.

As for the vinyl sign stuff, since most of it is done by hand, and the letters are 50mm high, then being out by 0.5mm (1%) makes no difference to anything.

Example from a friend: They were being beaten by ~$35 on a quote for work and losing out. They were fitting proper electronic locking multipoint systems. The cheaper quote was fitting a single electric strike that opened the door if there was a power cut and worked off the nightlatch alone, and cost 5% of the proper system. Both are options that, unless you know, seem the same, but the ~$35 more expensive one is far, far better. And that $35 is under 5% of the overall cost.

My point is, you have to know the micRo is the better option, when there are cheaper clones of it out there, and even then, some people will still just shop on price.

I've been been staring at a screen for 40hrs, the only time I get for website work is when Robin goes home for some holiday ;p...there is no real allegory, though the story's finished in my mind! I started to respond in such a didactic way to your last post that there was nothing left to do but spin a yarn, lest I bore myself to death. I did leave it a cliffhanger, endings are welcome (though I know how it ends). ;p

I would say that there is a common misconception about "tolerances", with most people believing that there is some seeking of the "HOLY GRAIL" of tightness, which just is not true, Tolerance is tolerance, micRo is no exception. By that I mean, once we have reached the non-binding tolerance, the machine will move....but this tell us little about the quality of the machine, because we have not qualified the truly important factors where "tolerances" easily slip away (in the fake allegory, it was assumed that the bore was wavy from being machined on other milling machines that are wearing, causing a wave like oscillation around the periphery. The only way an inside gauge will ever discover an "out of round" condition is by the wisdom of the mechanic, the quality of the specs and so on. A bore like that will destroy whatever it is supposed to bear, but it would measure to spec, especially as this information becomes less known even to the machinists themselves. This "process control" is why Toyota cars last longer than others, not because they make TIGHTER bores, but because they can make consistently ROUND bores. Two engines may be built to the same spec, one may die quickly, the other last for eons. The secret? Attention to protocols for measuring specs that others do not, like bore round, tool markings, hand ring fitments and lash treatments etc etc etc. These are things you learn to check for from experience with other "master mechs". (Granpas)

Therefore, what I see is not a tighter axial spec, as you suggested was terminal for the micRo. The path I seek is to best control our process, as that is what equates to LONG LIFE and CONSISTENT OPERATION. As a matter of fact, decreasing the bore LASH tolerances tighter than the establish industry practice (for like ever now, 100+ years we've known .002 and .005 quite well) only causes the machine to wear out quickly, losing "tolerances" exponentially compared to our freewheel'n sloppy machine. But if that large tolerance machine is BUILT WELL (round bores! cross hatched etc), and maintains the spec tolerance all the way around the bores very consistently, then we see exponentially LONGER life out the system.

Ah! I see! So we win the race, then, but have to rebuild the engine for the next race. ;-)

Of course, though, that was kind of my point, but I think you missed it a little. Yes, getting everything perfect is what you are trying to do. Those who make a cheap copy will do the same as you for less money, and produce a weaker and less able product. However, they will not have the overheads that come with making a proper product.

The solution is to get yours onto the market and selling in some volume as fast as possible, get the word out, so to speak, and build a sense of community. Sell at a higher profit margin to begin with, then reduce the price after a while, as competitors come onto the market, to ensure you have recouped the initial overheads that they don't have.

I like the sound of that! You mean to say, the longer I sit hear dreaming about owning a micro, the greater the chance is that I might be able to afford one?! That would be pretty awesome.

Here's what my micRo wants to be when it grows up (well, born really, because I still haven't received it yet): PCB Fabricator
I REALLY like the tool holder they have on that thing! I have got to find out where they bought it.

-Brian

I've already bought a load of little carbide mills for exactly this purpose. I've got a small custom battery charger project that would be perfect for this right now, too. :-(

I've also bought a 50Hz impact engraver thing too, which I'm going to trial. It's designed for hand-held use, and the force and vibration might be too much for micRo, but I will test it when I get the micRo. I'm envisioning simply making a mount for the impact engraver onto the Z, then doing raster scan printing. Rather than vary the impact control on the engraver, which is manual, I'm going to shift the Z axis up and down, to get more or less impact. If I vary it as if it was the greyscale value of the image, it should work quite well.

You probably have a similar thing as we do at some games arcades and fairgrounds, where you have your picture taken and it is engraved on a locket or keyring. The engraver system uses a carbide or diamond stylus which doesn't, as far as I know, rotate or vibrate, but simply varies the pressure as it is dragged back and forth. I've bought a carbide scriber to try the same thing.

Vinyl cutting, I've not even thought about, aside from whoever it was who showed a video on here of it. Likewise the T-shirt printing, which the wife thinks is fabulous. I might have to make one of those.

The 3DP stuff, I'm just going to buy a head from LL once they have it working nicely, probably with my second micRo, one with the larger XYZ too.

My ending was...when you pull into the pit, the car backfires and burns me up, so you floor it and win the race. At the trophy ceremony you were toasting the cup with a big bottle of Cruzan rum. How very crass.

Just finished a slide for the front page, do you like it?

Cheers~

Click to view attachment

The working speed is close. From what I can see in the vid, micRo cuts tighter...hard to say.

There are a lot of nice bells and whistles on their products but at a cost? Since the listed price of their sound enclosures alone cost $750 - $1500, I image the price of a mill would be about 3 - 5 times the cost of a micro.

Still they have some nice features we could steal.... I mean borrow.

Sound enclosure ----- Basically an old printer enclosure.
Vacuum table --------- Nothing new there.
Vacuum Z axis ------- Nothing new. but the up/down feature when engaged is nice. Particularly if controlled by the vacuum itself.
Front panel control --- Doable but a matter of preference.
Tool changer --------- Very sweet. A recessed/removable tool tray could be added to any table.

All this stuff is do-able as add-ons. Now that the micros are out there people don't have to wait for BC. Keep it open source and inexpensive. The more popular designs could eventually be buffed up, and offered by lumenlab as kits or add on products.

Good attitude JPD, keep that DIY spirit. W and I have discussed tool changers before, at least until I made us get back to work. It is one of the things that would get done in the "free time" we'd have by outsourcing. We know how that turned out. The NMTA is now defunct, mind blowing. Who will set the machine tool standards? China? I noticed on the NMTA site that machine shop businesses were folding rapidly, with revenues 60% depressed. America had better embrace "personal robotics" if we are to have our precision parts...

Google search : nmta
New Mexico Teacher Assessment
Northwest Marine Trade Association
National Money Transmitters Association
New Mexico Trials Association
Nebraska Music Teachers Association
Nevada Motor Transport Association
Northwest Michigan Transport Alliance
New Mexico Trucking Association
Northern Michigan Truck Accessories
New Model for Tax Administration


????

Typo sorry.

The NTMA is the national representative of the custom precision manufacturing industry in the United States.

Many NTMA members are small businesses, privately owned and operated, yet the industry generates sales in excess of $40 billion a year.

---------

My understanding is that membership levels went way down, then the president quit, and now they are forming a private company MSI to take care of existing members based on fees, rather than dues.

https://www.ntma.org/EWEB/Dynamicpage.aspx?..._month_name=Nov

A machinist discusses the economy:

http://americanmachinist.com/Classes/Artic...mp;OASKEY=Issue

Interesting stuff. One thing that the machinist misses, I think, is that not only are the Chinese now fully trained, at our own universities before going home, but they also get exposed to the huge levels of COSSH, HSE and other red tape. They know our tricks better than we do, and we sold them the inside track for not making the same mistakes as us.

The western world has spent billions creating pointless and expensive bureaucracy, and trying to sell it to the rest of the world. China has seen it first hand, in the thousands of students who come back every year, and in the ISO9001, 14001, etc. and RoHS, and more. They are smart enough to realise that 95% of it doesn't matter, and that paying a consultant €40k to look at their waste management processes is money lost pointlessly.

Until we realise the same - that the job needs to be done well and right, without more overheads than the total cost of Chinese production, our economies (based on manufacturing) cannot recover.

I have a couple $250 off coupons micRo+controller, anyone want one?