Thread: Bueller's shed - a noobs journey through vintage machinery

Thanks fletty! Made a bit more progress on my gates today. Have both couplers and all the flanges ready for glue up, cut one side of the blast gate to size and then marked out the slider ready for cutting tomorrow. Should have something ready tomorrow afternoon if all goes to plan! Glad I have the little Woodfast bandsaw for this, has made cutting the PVC to size a breeze before heading over to the sander for fine tuning.

Dan, I have just caught up on 22 pages of this very interesting thread, just got some free downloads. Glad you came back. It is not clear in the photos of your drill press if the table has a rise and fall mechanism? If not there is a plan on the web somewhere on how to install a counterweight assistant. The only criticism/query I have is on your plan of the shed by having your grinder station anywhere near your woodworking machines. I see you are using a CBN wheel, but remember it only takes one spark in dust/shavings to start a slow combustion and all your dreams are gone. I have a grinding station with 4 grinders mounted on it, but it is completely remote from any wood shavings/dust.Yep I have to walk 6 M to use the Tormek for a touchup, but it gets the blood moving in my legs.
Keep posting, hoping to get the NBN in 2 weeks, so hope to catch up on a lot of missed threads.
Rgds,
Crocy.

remember it only takes one spark in dust/shavings to start a slow combustion and all your dreams are gone. I have a grinding station with 4 grinders mounted on it, but it is completely remote from any wood shavings/dust.

In prinicple I agree but it also depends how good your dust extraction system is. For a fire to propagate the dust has to be thick enough to sustain the fire so if there is only a thin layer of dust it won't happen. The DC system I see Dan setting up should have such good dust extraction he should be OK. His lathe will still throw some chips mainly forward towards the operator but there won't be any fine dust on his floor.

CBN wheels also seem to make fewer sparks than other wheels but to reduce the possibility of sparks landing on the floor (and the creation of more mess) and coming into contact with dust placing a empty food can like a tinned fruit can immediately under the wheel catches most of the sparks. If you do a lot of sharpening in one go, beware! it can get really hot - I suspend mine under some of the more sparking wheels.

I also use a metal dust catcher like this.
IMG_1615.jpg

Picked up my router table this arvo, decided to spend the evening getting the stand put together. Fit and finish is quite nice on the stand but I was really blown away by the cast iron table. Very well machined and covered in a good coating of machine oil to stop rust.





Put the table back in the packaging for the trip to the shed and tomorrow I’ll put everything together.

Weekend was not as productive as I’d hoped! Yesterday I cracked it with the various problems on my ute, wound up spending the day replacing some parts and then giving it a full clean and fluid change. Today I managed to make it into the shed where I knocked out a quick router stand. Still need to fit the casters and back bracing but very happy with it, took me and my old man about an hour to knock out in total.



Really starting to enjoy myself in the shed now, it’s getting to the point where I can just build stuff rather than needing to go out and buy stuff or research things etc.

Dan, I reckon you could just enclose the router stand sides and underneath with either some some MDF or sheet metal, put some transparent doors on the front, and put a BMH entry and out-take on either side and you'd have the makings of simple yet effective router under table DC?

Originally Posted by BobL

Dan, I reckon you could just enclose the router stand sides and underneath with either some some MDF or sheet metal, put some transparent doors on the front, and put a BMH entry and out-take on either side and you'd have the makings of simple yet effective router under table DC?

My thoughts exactly mate, one of the reasons I liked that stand was because of how easy it would be to fit dust collection. As soon as I’ve got the router and lift fitted that will be my next task, generates entirely too much dust to use without it.

Last month or so has been hectic, only been able to spend a few hours at most per week in the shed [emoji19]

I did manage to finish the router table and stand, the photo doesn’t show it but I’ve also added the fence and micro adjustment kit and hooked up dust collection to the 2 1/2” port. More dust collection will be added soon once I seal up the bottom frame.



Because I haven’t been able to get out to the shed as much I’ve been working on some other projects for the shed from home. The first project is adding electronic rise and fall on the router lift. Normally you adjust the Baladonia lift with a long allen key inserted through the top of the table into the gear system below. The good part about this is that there is a lot of the Allen key exposed below which can be attached to a stepper motor to control it electronically.

Had most of the parts already so last night I knocked up a quick Arduino prototype with a spare stepper I had.

https://youtu.be/RNaiDEXMJCI

The stepper I used has 3.5kg of torque so not sure if it’s fit for purpose but it’s sitting there doing nothing so worth a try. If it needs more juice I’ll order a bigger stepper or get one with a gearbox attached. Connecting the motor to the allen key will be done with a coupler, just waiting on it to arrive and then I’ll figure out how I’m going to mount the stepper.

The other project I’m working on is a Raspberry Pi hifi which will act as a wireless Spotify speaker in addition to doing air quality monitoring and sending security alerts to my phone if there is a break in or fire.

For the Spotify part of things I ordered a cheap amp + DAC hat for the Raspberry Pi.

https://core-electronics.com.au/expa...i-b-2b-3b.html

For the price the sound quality is magic, hooked it up to some old Celestion speakers I bought donkeys ago and was blown away. You do need a decent power supply though, I’m using a spare adjustable voltage laptop PSU set to 20v/4.5a. Running it off a 12v supply was less impressive, really lacked headroom so something to consider.

https://youtu.be/RbIgjd-zZ3E

And Spotify streaming from my phone works a treat. I can be playing stuff with headphones and change to the Pi in two taps. Just need to figure out a case now.

Tried out the stepper motor this arvo, as I feared it lacks the torque to turn the allen key. I was thinking about it though and direct drive is probably not the best way to go about this, these steppers are usually used with a belt on toothed pulleys. Not in a mad rush, waiting on my new stepper driver which allows much higher current per channel than the Arduino hat I’m currently using. Once that arrives I’ll look at a larger stepper with a belt and pulleys.

The multi-vee belt is MUCH better.

Which driver are you buying? I bought some TB6600s and their good to 45v and 4.5A. I’m driving mine at 36v. They have dip switches to set current control and stepping rate. Not a bad unit and fairly cheap.

Just looked up my stepper specs. Their Nema 23 rated at 270 oz in or 19.34 kg cm. Got mine from Stepperonline.

Originally Posted by MrFixIt

The multi-vee belt is MUCH better.

Not as good as a toothed belt.

Originally Posted by Lappa

Which driver are you buying? I bought some TB6600s and their good to 45v and 4.5A. I’m driving mine at 36v. They have dip switches to set current control and stepping rate. Not a bad unit and fairly cheap.

Just looked up my stepper specs. Their Nema 23 rated at 270 oz in or 19.34 kg cm. Got mine from Stepperonline.

That’s encouraging, I just received a TB6600 yesterday but still haven’t gotten around to ordering another stepper. Thanks for posting the specs, that will really help choosing the right one!

Spent a bit of time doing some ACTUAL woodworking today! Need to make some frames for my sisters wedding photos so spent the arvo dialling in the saw and sled. Will be using some 50ish year old Jarrah floorboards that I picked up cheap on Gumtree so I quickly knocked out a square frame to test. Very happy, the Incra sled is a great piece of kit.

Any updates on the shed Bueller?