March 9, 2012
OK - Total skunkworks project tonight. I’m slightly ashamed to say that I’m knocking off THIS BED in a few hours out of this here piece of nice plywood. Posts to follow.

OK - Total skunkworks project tonight. I’m slightly ashamed to say that I’m knocking off THIS BED in a few hours out of this here piece of nice plywood. Posts to follow.

March 5, 2012

Anybody who cares or knows anything about camera rigs, video, steadycams, WHATEVER you MUST watch this if you haven’t already. Pretty sure this changes (almost) everything. Will let you know just as soon as we build one of these…. No seriously :-)

“Henning Sandstrom stopped by FreeFly HQ on his way to Maui to teach me how to film beautiful forest scenes like he does so well!The weather was really challenging, but we got the chance to do a few flights with the newly completed 3 axis gimbal. This video shows the gimbal with a Sony FS100 and 18-55 lens. Henning also was flying his CineStar 8 for some of the zoomed in shots with a 160mm lens equivalent (Canon 100mm lens on 7D) We shot the behind the scenes with a RED EPIC at 300FPS. Really fun to get to see how Henning works his magic and get to feed him some huge American cheeseburgers”

March 4, 2012
New peg board and other improvements around the shop. The pegboard was of course made on the CNC router out of lauan and finished with clear shellac. 

New peg board and other improvements around the shop. The pegboard was of course made on the CNC router out of lauan and finished with clear shellac. 

March 2, 2012
[Flash 10 is required to watch video]

A little bit of post routing cleanup of some MDF parts cut out on the CNC router from an Adobe Illustrator file. Depending on the particular flavor or material and cutter needed, some final hand sanding is required here and there. Also, depending is the amount of dust created. Standard weight MDF can be quite yucky to work with. Ultralight is generally better, and Ranger is perhaps even better than that. Take this as proof that the shop isn’t all glamorous robots and lasers. Sometimes it’s just old fashioned sweat, dirt, and elbow grease. 

[Flash 10 is required to watch video]

Time lapse of a typical CNC router job in MDF, including two different drill sizes, some half-way through pocketing (try thing that with a laser!) and a final profiling cut. These files came in via Adobe Illustrator, which were then formatted and sent out as a DXF for cutting. 

February 28, 2012

CNC cutting grooves in nice Baltic birch for artist Scott Campbell. Scott and crew pack all of these grooves with cannon fuse (yes), then paste some special paper over it and then they LIGHT IT ON FIRE!  It looks pretty damn awesome too. Files from Adobe Illustrator, cut on the CNC router.

Science Lesson. PAY ATTENTION. 

andybaker:

Broadway & Flushing, Brooklyn. The intentionally blurry image betrays the crazy tripping flashing seizure inducing LED rope light to be a distinct sequence of red, blue, and green, with each color lasting around 33 milliseconds. So how does one know this just by analyzing the photo exactly? WELL… look at the streaking on the other lights - the pulsed light sources, the yellow sodium vapor and greenish mercury vapor lights. Those are discharge lamps driven by standard 60 Hz (frequency) A/C current, producing a total of 120 pulses per second. Since the entire image is motion blurred from camera movement, you can line up the pulses from a known source and use them to determine the timing. It’s an impromptu streak camera! SCIENCE!

February 25, 2012
Get your fancy French-Vietnamese eat on at Rouge et Blanc in Soho - because you’ll be able to look at this freshly CNC routed teak door in person while you enjoy Fatty Lamb Ribs and Pork Belly Banh Mi. I guess they’re serving brunch now too. From an Adobe Illustrator file. 

Get your fancy French-Vietnamese eat on at Rouge et Blanc in Soho - because you’ll be able to look at this freshly CNC routed teak door in person while you enjoy Fatty Lamb Ribs and Pork Belly Banh Mi. I guess they’re serving brunch now too. From an Adobe Illustrator file. 

Using the CNC router to ream 132 holes in an aluminum plate. The purpose of reaming is to enlarge a previously drilled hole very slightly to a more round and accurately dimensioned size - or to bring it to a tighter tolerance. It’s almost impossible to use a plain old drill and get consistent perfectly round holes at an exact repeatable size. Drills just aren’t good at that. When you need a perfect air-tight fit or a snug and secure press-in of a pin or shaft, you need the accuracy that only a reaming operation can provide. After reaming, these pieces will be cut out and press fit on to the shafts of stepper motors for a motorized lighting system for jewelry display cases. Very fancy indeed. Now, Doing reaming on the CNC router would normally be a bad idea, owing to it’s high speed, except that we have really low spindle speed capabilities, so, ya know…. it’s cool. 

Using the CNC router to ream 132 holes in an aluminum plate. The purpose of reaming is to enlarge a previously drilled hole very slightly to a more round and accurately dimensioned size - or to bring it to a tighter tolerance. It’s almost impossible to use a plain old drill and get consistent perfectly round holes at an exact repeatable size. Drills just aren’t good at that. When you need a perfect air-tight fit or a snug and secure press-in of a pin or shaft, you need the accuracy that only a reaming operation can provide. After reaming, these pieces will be cut out and press fit on to the shafts of stepper motors for a motorized lighting system for jewelry display cases. Very fancy indeed. Now, Doing reaming on the CNC router would normally be a bad idea, owing to it’s high speed, except that we have really low spindle speed capabilities, so, ya know…. it’s cool. 

February 18, 2012

So this is about 2% of the fun for the NYC Fashion Week.  Lots of trees, lots of letters, lots of white and frosted acrylic / Plexiglas cut on the CNC router. The sheets are covered in protective paper, which is lots of fun to peel. The fuzzy lines are where the cuts are. Sometimes static electricity or the rubber adhesive for the protective paper make the shavings stick.  The installers put this stuff up, and usually end up peeling the paper off a few minutes before the show/store/exhibit/installation opens. 

Adding a few tapped holes to a part of a camera rig to enable connection to a motion control system. I love this kind of work, because it’s all about the little details and doing it right - Spot drilling the hole locations, then drilling them with the tap drill, followed by a plug tap then a bottoming tap, using the spring loaded tap centering tool, then adding a nice chamfer to the hole on top of it all. Sure, you could have done this on a drill press by eye, but it probably would have looked like hell and might not have worked and then you might have broken the tap off in the second hole… then what?! I say take the extra time. It’s an expensive piece to risk ruining. A mentor once told me “There’s a million ways to do the job, but only one of them is right.” - and I stand by it. 

Adding a few tapped holes to a part of a camera rig to enable connection to a motion control system. I love this kind of work, because it’s all about the little details and doing it right - Spot drilling the hole locations, then drilling them with the tap drill, followed by a plug tap then a bottoming tap, using the spring loaded tap centering tool, then adding a nice chamfer to the hole on top of it all. Sure, you could have done this on a drill press by eye, but it probably would have looked like hell and might not have worked and then you might have broken the tap off in the second hole… then what?! I say take the extra time. It’s an expensive piece to risk ruining. A mentor once told me “There’s a million ways to do the job, but only one of them is right.” - and I stand by it. 

Desks for a client’s office, using readily available and very affordable birch veneer plywood in a slot-together design - Less than $40 a sheet. It’s not without it’s drawbacks though, because it does like to warp, but if you know it’s going to happen and the design can manage it and it’s assembled properly, projects can come out really nicely and for not a lot of money. 

So this is all the top secret stuff Jon, Matty, Tom and Kenzan have been developing. They’ve been in Chicago all week installing this stuff. LOTS of LEDs. Lots. 

rushdesign:

Here are some burn-in photos of the S1k lighting job we have been sharing.  This is only 33% of them its going to be very bright in the loft!

February 4, 2012

The making of a prototype table top, this time in poplar, which is much more affordable than the walnut for the final piece. Made on the CNC router from a Solidworks CAD file. I think I see an oxbow lake about to form…

Weekend Kontraptioneering Special Diatribe and Public Service Announcement:Dear amateur Brooklyn electricians… I’m going try to hold off from laying down the vicious, bitter and sharply abusive attack that I feel you deserve… for nearly popping all of my computers and light fixtures and any other 110V device I use and for causing sparks to shoot out of the breaker box… Yeah great work guys. PLEASE REMEMBER TO TIGHTEN ALL OF THE SCREWS ON ALL OF THE TERMINALS! If the wire is too thin for a particular terminal, THEN DON’T USE THAT FUCKING TERMINAL! (See far left screw and associated scorch marks) Nobody else can use it now, good job! Seems the intense heat from the years of arcing fused it. No problem though, the wire was so loose I could just sort of pull it out… And that wire was the neutral for the entire goddamn first floor of the building. Mark said “I can see it GLOWING!!” Yeah, NICE JOB GUYS! But seriously, maybe you ought to stick to your usual duty of spreading roofing tar before you kill 3 entire families and their babies and pets in a structure fire.  I saved your ass this time. I saw the lights flick and I KNEW exactly what was going on, and sure enough, there it was. I was the one that cleaned up after you. Keep your hands out of places they don’t belong. 

Weekend Kontraptioneering Special Diatribe and Public Service Announcement:
Dear amateur Brooklyn electricians…

I’m going try to hold off from laying down the vicious, bitter and sharply abusive attack that I feel you deserve… for nearly popping all of my computers and light fixtures and any other 110V device I use and for causing sparks to shoot out of the breaker box… Yeah great work guys. PLEASE REMEMBER TO TIGHTEN ALL OF THE SCREWS ON ALL OF THE TERMINALS! If the wire is too thin for a particular terminal, THEN DON’T USE THAT FUCKING TERMINAL! (See far left screw and associated scorch marks) Nobody else can use it now, good job! Seems the intense heat from the years of arcing fused it. No problem though, the wire was so loose I could just sort of pull it out… And that wire was the neutral for the entire goddamn first floor of the building. Mark said “I can see it GLOWING!!” Yeah, NICE JOB GUYS! But seriously, maybe you ought to stick to your usual duty of spreading roofing tar before you kill 3 entire families and their babies and pets in a structure fire.  I saved your ass this time. I saw the lights flick and I KNEW exactly what was going on, and sure enough, there it was. I was the one that cleaned up after you. Keep your hands out of places they don’t belong.