The Sequel - Oh Blimey I bought a CNC Lathe (Beaver TC 20)

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nrml:
Friars balsam smells wonderful. If someone accidentally spills some at work, everyone in the area drifts that way to have a sniff.

awemawson:
At long last the sticky backed green baize to line the Renishaw Probe box arrived this morning so I was able to finish it off.

First I made a closed box, pinned and glued which was left for the PVA to set hard. Then the closed box was sanded down to a fair finish which revealed the rubbish quality of the "12 mm 7 ply" that I was using. It turns out that actually it's 9 ply, with the extra two plys being paper thin and effectively just colouring at 5.5 thou thick! Bits got sanded off which proved to be very difficult to disguise with the stained varnish that I used.

Then the box was sawn into a top and a bottom, thus ensuring that they matched in 'unsquareness' though in fact they were pretty good.

Umpteen coats of dark oak varnish stain later I was able to fit the hinges and corner protectors. With water based and oil based paints I always suspend my brush in water to prevent it drying out over night, as it easily shakes / wipes dry ready for the next coat. Saves ages washing brushes :ddb:

awemawson:
And then this morning the baize went on. Knowing this stuff is great fun even on open flat surfaces, I thought that I'd be clever and make a paper template. It 'sort of worked' but this stuff stretches all over the place and when it's 'down' it stays down resisting movement. I'm not entirely happy with the result as it's not absolutely flat in places but it's definitely functional.

Some time earlier I had 3D printed a protective cap in ABS that slips over the actual probe itself, preserving the ruby tip (hopefully!)

awemawson:
When I got this lathe it was evident that the main reason for it's demise had been a leaking Lithium battery used to back up some of the RAM within the controller, and it's leaking fluid had done major damage to the electronics, dissolving away copper track, i/c pins and the aluminium extrusions of the card cage.

I had always intended to re-locate the batteries (as there are two) to a place where were they to leak again no damage would be done, and to this end I had obtained a spare battery holder like the existing one so that rather than have a large button cell on a card and a C size cell in a holder, there would be two C sized holders remotely wired.

The problem was that the original rather over complicated battery holders were a pain to mount in an appropriate place low down so that leakages would be less of an issue. But then it dawned on me, If I used a pair of conventional panel mount cylindrical C cell holders, and put them in a plastic box such that it would contain leakage then where it was mounted became far less critical.

So an acrylic box and a pair of Bulgin battery holders were ordered from RSComponents and assembled.

First picture is of the original RAM card that was totally destroyed by the battery leak

hermetic:
Very neat Andrew! Could you not (if needed) put another battery holder in parralell, or switched in, so that you could fit a new battery before removing the old one, or have you engineered out that memory volatility now?
Phil

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