I’ve been really busy lately, and to top it all off I’ve had a problem with WordPress showing me a blank page when I attempt to log in for any reason. Tonight I tried moving all my plugins to a new directory and everything started working again so I guess things are back.
What have I been up to other than working?
- Playing with writing Android software for my new phone, a Droid. Very cool phone. I am reminded how much I hate developing GUIs though. It’s so much work! In any case, I’ve been doodling with writing a program for helping out at the field during rocket launches. I’d like to publish it eventually but it’s tough to find the time to work on it.
- Cleaning the basement. I’ve had boxes that I haven’t fully unpacked since I moved out here to New Jersey from Indiana 5 years ago. It’s looking a lot better down there now.
- Planning my new CNC router. I currently have a Taig CNC mill, which is nice, but I often find myself wishing I had something with larger work area and higher feeds. I have an old PCB router (probably 20 years old) that was given to me, and it’s built like a tank so I think it’ll make a good frame for a retrofit (replacing wimpy little spindle motor with Bosch Colt router, wimpy steppers w/ 400 oz-in steppers, wimpy leadscrews with something beefy and fast like 1/2″ x 0.5″ or something). The blank PCB (copper-clad G10 fiberglass) sheets it used to cut are about 12″x18″, so the work area is not huge but still a pretty useful size. I’m hoping I can reuse all the linear rails and everything so it won’t be a big deal to retrofit it.
- Planning a million projects, as usual. I’ve just been too busy to actually get anything done on them. Hopefully that will change soon.
I was recently curious to see if I could build an extremely crude gyrocompass with little more than a motor and a wheel. I took an old motor I’ve had for probably 15 years and mounted it to a surplus stroller wheel with a shaft supported on bearings and a frame to hold everything together. The concept is that the motor spins up the wheel, developing tremendous inertia like a gyroscope, and the entire thing is suspended just so. If all the forces are in the right ballpark, over the course of 3 or 4 hours it should eventually orient itself so that it points to true north. So I built it and tried it out. Turns out the motor I had handy wants to spin that wheel *really* fast. It vibrated like crazy, almost a little scary. Haha. Those wheels aren’t the truest things ever. Maybe some time I will swap it out for something smaller that’s balanced better. I still think it would be cool to make a crude gyrocompass, I can’t see why it wouldn’t work.
