Team Shakey Build Diary

[bot_bandit]

Amazing work as always Alex! Were these made for commission or will they be up for sale for anyone?

[Shakey]

Amazing work as always Alex! Were these made for commission or will they be up for sale for anyone?

They'll be up for sale for anyone, going to go on the grand old ebay.

[botomatic1000]

Oooh Ebay! I may treat myself lol

[Shakey]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 933wt_1139

I've started the first of the auctions for the flipper, it's starting at pretty much component cost!

[botomatic1000]

If I (well my mum lol) wins it im going to give it the tiger shark mouth decals you see on the side of planes and will be named Mako.

[UserFriendly]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 933wt_1139

I've started the first of the auctions for the flipper, it's starting at pretty much component cost!

Looks like this is pretty hot property!!

[HugoIsOnFire]

woah, thats amazing, with the same money you could also buy...
A boat http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Tabur-T300-Bo ... SwdzVXqawH
a super legit transmitter-receiver set up http://www.hobbyking.co.uk/hobbyking/st ... ouse_.html

or the components for nearly 3 antweights! i think the value skyrockets because the evil mastermind Alex made it

[Shakey]

I'm going to be putting the funds from this bot (one of 3 ebay ants) towards a CNC router/mill which'll let me do super fancy stuff with polycarbonate.

Between that and the printer and getting a load of spinner discs cut there shouldn't be any design out of reach of my tooling setup. So expect some pretty weird stuff once I have my hands on it!

[InfernalTank]

I got the chance to mess around with both of them at Shakey's place and they are quite fun. The teal flipper definitely looks like a strong contender, while the red one definitely requires some driving practice to get used to.

[Shakey]

Well the two ebay fundbots sold a lot better than I expected and so I decided tot reat myself!

I know have this lovely piece of machinery cluttering up my room:

CNC Router/Mill

A4 bit of polycarbonate for scale. It's a 3020T mill which is the generic brand of cheap mill that inhabits ebay currently. It's actually very solidly built and while the finish can be a bit rough round the edges I'm suitably impressed with the machine. It does have one problem though:


This is the control box of the mill and the problem is that circuit board in the bottom left. That part controls the stepper motors and talks to the PC, the problem is it uses a parallel port and software known as Mach3. I haven't had a parallel port on my PC in years and it requires a not so cheap conversion board to run (which wouldn't actually fit). The software is also end of life and is surpassed by many of the open source offerings these days. To fix this I have this:

This is a Gshield v5b mounted onto an ARM toting Arduino board. Much more power and will happily accept gcode over USB making it much simpler to run.


A little mockup of the new control box. I need to order a 24v->12v step down converter and print a mount to hold the arduino and the converter in place. Wiring it shouldn't be too long then it's just a matter of getting the settings sorted and it should be a working CNC machine!

Once it's running it should let me make much stronger ants and be able to try designs I otherwise wouldn't be able to as well as allow me to CNC in beetles and some parts in feathers.

Mini Foxic
In amongst the pile of commissions being worked on I managed to get this guy sorted and in the hands of Craig Danby.




It's certainly a fun machine and has given me some ideas to further improve my own flippers with.