I got home Friday to a box on my doorstep. It’s my new CNC router I bought from Woot for $200. It’s exciting. I opened the box and checked it out, seems to be all here in pieces needing to be assembled. Not tonight but yea!
I’m supposed to be working on the boat up on the hard in San Rafael this weekend.
I woke up at 3:00 AM to a dream about my new router. I got up and assembled the thing. It’s computer driven, with three stepper motors to control it. It took about three hours to build it. Then I went back to bed.
In the later morning I made it to the Farmers Market in Healdsburg before they closed. Cucumbers and tarragon for pickles, and a perfect peach.
Back home, the router’s got my interest. I connected my DVD drive to the USB port and downloaded the software to the computer. Check the COM port at 3, open the driver, Damn, the ‘Candle’ driver won’t open. I tried everything to no avail. Reboot, reload an older version, nothing worked. I tried a couple other programs, finally I downloaded Java and ‘Universal Gcode Platform’ or UGS and it worked, I could move the motors. Run the wizard to get things zeroed and it all works. I opened a couple Gcode programs from the install disk, wrote some letter characters, a small wheel and a PC board on thin pieces of wood. This thing will be really useful for making instruments, cutting fret boards precisely, PC boards for pre-amps, a really useful tool.
“Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Tonto, cleverly disguised as a tea bag, is up to his neck in hot water.” (Arthur Freeman).
So I’m supposed to be working on my boat. The rudder is here with a large chunk of worm damage near the water line. It’s mahogany. I cut out a large chunk with my hand jig saw. Dang, these critters go way deep into the wood. I chiseled in deeper beyond the piece of wood I planned on. I found another piece of wood to replace it with. Lacquer thinner should kill them, wrapped in plastic wrap.
Today I did the laundry, cut some more parts for the boat, made pickles, four jars, a bucket of chicken veggie soup for lunches and fired up the router to cut a dragon program. It’s still running after several hours.
I didn’t make it to the boat, but I did get a lot done for it.
8shotoflove8 