Gallery, Projects and General > Project Logs
The Return of No. 83, a Hot Air Engine
nickle:
I also have a home brew cnc. Mine is an x2 driven by Linux cnc and an old pc with a parallel card installed. I looked in to replacing the pc over the past 12 months and found that there are pcie parallel cards available for desktop pcs. I’ve lost touch with the Mach products and am too stingy to buy a new licence so I tried a recent build of Linux cnc and found it much improved over what it was over a decade ago. There are some alternative interfaces that I find easier to use than the default and the whole thing seems to accept my 18 year old pc and it’s parallel card.
I need to get going on refurbishing my foundry too. Just gotta keep bringing up the kids and earning the cash for a while longer.
Keep posting your work. It’s great
awemawson:
I agree that the loss of the like button was a great shame. It was a quick way of showing support and appreciation to contributors.
Not sure if it was changing forum software constraints or a choice by the team ?
vtsteam:
Nickle, funny how digital tech ages, vs manual machines. Short lifespans without major attention. Which is the reason they are used by me so little -- the very problem for me is I don't use them except very occasionally -- and that's when they tend to evidence aging problems, so the broken machine then becomes another project in itself. Right now it's the need to change over to something free without need of a parallel port, so it looks like GRBL is the way to get some use out of them for me. I have a box of Arduino Unos, so nothing fancy or more expensive or modern is going to happen here.
Dwayne, Andrew, Tom, funny, I never used the "Like" feature when it was here because it required allowing online tracking scripts to run in my browser that I normally block. As a result I did not either see the likes (my own or anybody else's) or have available a "Like" button. Also, the best most lively time here was the time before likes. I think they ushered in the decline, it wasn't their removal that caused it.
But from a larger perspective, When I participate as a forum member, I don't want personal votes (which is what a Like is) I want conversations. To me, Likes are just one more way of automating communication. It doesn't take effort, and it doesn't do anything except kind of indicate popularity. You can look at hits on a topic to judge that, anyway.
I see a forum like a pub. A place where people talk. If they're not talking and just pushing buttons, there's no point to the forum. A forum's great strength compared to a video, is that it is an active form of communication, instead of passive. You can discuss things at length. You can ask questions. You can co-create projects. And it's focused on an area of interest, and presents things in a very readable way. Like articles in a collaborative magazine.
This combination is very different to anything else, and I'd hate to see this forum in particular disappear. It has a very egalitarian feel compared to others I've participated in. It has never been filled with "experts and dunces" or, "the right way and the wrong way." Rather there was always a deep respect for individuality and experimentation -- and that also is rare these days. This thread itself would not exist if I felt otherwise. This is the place for me.
Oh, one other thing about "Likes," you have to be a member, and signed in to push the button. There were 500 anonymous visitors the other day when I looked, and 3 members signed in -- one of which was me. I don't think likes are going to make a dent in that. I think good conversations and good will is.
People want to be around other people with shared interests.
Country Bubba:
I am one of the "lurkers" that you are talking about. I subscribed to the group many years ago and usually don't post to a thread that I am interested in unless I feel I have something to contribute or to ask a question on a subject is of interest to me and need some clarification especially if it involves some project that I may be working on.
But being in my 80s, the number and type of projects is diminishing for various reasons.
BUT I do enjoy seeing how other people doing things and trying to learn in case I might ever need that type of info.
One great example is your other thread on the cnc controller!
Always enjoy your posts over the years!
Country Bubba
vtsteam:
Thanks Country Bubba! Great to hear from people even if you don't have a question or feel you want to add something. It's just nice to hear from people. :beer:
I have been down a rabbit hole of CNC and old computers so deep this last week, I was wondering if I would ever find my way out! :bang: :bang: :bang: :lol:
What a waste of time. Absolutely for sure I could have made by hand a hundred samples of what I want to make one of via CNC during this time. But I get stubbornly stuck on solving a problem, and I can't stop un til I eventually decide it isn't solvable, or I beat it.
I'm sorry I haven't continued with No. 83 in the meantime, but like I said, I was stuck on this nearly pointless set of CNC problems.
Ultimately, the problem turned out to be two bad driver laptop computers -- one with a bad keyboard and (after replacement) a bad system board, the other with a bad single memory location in low (soldered) memory on the system board, some messed up hard drives, and old programs. The problems which confounded those were the need for parallel ports by the driver boards, and Microsoft XP for one of the hot wire foam cutting programs. Finally, none of my existing foam cutting driver programs will cut the shape I want, since they are primarily geared toward cutting wings.
Okay, I've given up, trashed the two bad laptops, and written off the foam cutting programs. I'll either write my own, or (probably) just write G-code directly to do what I want to do -- which is basically simple shapes. I also might just make up a simple(er) and smaller hot wire foam cutter than the one I have since I am NOT planning to cut wings in the future.
Anyway, explanation above of why I am momentarily away. Back at this engine shortly again.....
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