PS. And you also get an example of what happens when I don’t have a mad sucker stuck on the end of my cutter. There is your dirt, Mr @Bstanga ! My shop is in fact a working shop. Its just dangerous metal curls that are blue on one side and shiny on the other 
@Bstanga Awesome ‘birds’ there! I enjoy getting little peaks into other peopls hobby spaces. And when it comes to planes, helicopters and quads, oh man, now that is some serious fun! 
I have an Align Trex 400 PRO but its in storage right now. It tends to come out in the summer when the larger fields are open. The little E-flite Trio 180 is a darling. I can fly it in my living room. The torque tube tail and 3 blades make it a beast in small places but once you get use to how peppy it is you can make live in tight spaces no problem.
Of course the Skydio is a production tool more than anything else. Between the various functional things like 3D scanning and survey stuff its also a great little cinematic drone that refuses to crash.
My sons are FAA licensed drone pilots and they fly the really big jobs but I will spare you the details. When those models are ready for release they will be on our website. Till then they are “dis big n’ dis wide”
One thing you will notice between the two of us is @Bstanga has the FPVs and I don’t (my sons do but not me) and that is because when I want that experience I crawl into the real thing 
Awesome collection! I used to fly RC when I was younger. I’m also a regular pilot, multi/instrument/commercial, but I haven’t flown as Pilot In Command in 20+ years at this point.
@subnoize Sounds like you got lots of software solutions!
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I’m glad you noticed, I retired from Amtrak after 2 neck surgeries and could no longer look up. Then one day I saw Rotor Riot on youtube, my first look at FPV I had them build me one ready to fly and a kit to build. It was amazing. It got me back in the RC sport without having to look up. It is just like you are riding on the nose of a plane. I have a few goggles and I take folks on a ride it cool.
For those who are printing a “dust shoe” style manifold for the CNCDepot S30, take a look at the surface temperature of the S30 after about 40 minutes operation. This is in a 72 F degree shop with considerable air movement from a large fan.
There is no question you will see temperatures that will exceed the glass temperatures of both PLA and ABS. If you wrap that plastic around the spindle then you inhibit the airflow and the temperature will easily exceed 70° C.
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I got the powder coated dust manifold installed. This is v1, this is what will ship.
I got the powder coated carousel top installed. It takes 5 minutes to cut the the two pieces that make up the carousel or “table” but 3 weeks to get powder coated so I never bothered until now. It’s yellow on top and flat black on the underside. The numbers are much easier to read like that.
This makes the retracting carousel v1, this is what will ship.
I will begin installation of the tool length sensor for breakage in a day or so. Instead of the rails being on the top side, it will use the exact same system as the carousel and just have the tool length sensor on it. The carriage for the carousel doesn’t wiggle or move around so it’s a great platform for a sensor like the tool length.
So next steps are;
- Tool length sensor installation
- Tram spindle (again
) - Start making videos of the product in action
- Prep for kits distribution
- Move this conversation to the buy & sell topic
Do you have any issues with the S30 not wanting to let go of a tool holder? I’ve had a few cases where, if I leave a tool in the spindle overnight, everything cools and it seems like the taper has a death grip on the tool. It takes quite an effort to pull it out. Also, sometimes even if the taper releases, the drawbar doesn’t already release the knob completely and again, it requires some force to pull the tool out.
I’m wondering if this is normal and I only see it because I’m pulling the tools out by hand instead of letting the machine force them out…
I look at your carousel and wonder how much “hold down” force the fingers offer if the spindle doesn’t want to let go.
Ok, I am by no means an expert but what I do know is during the release of the drawbar the tool should move downwards exactly 1/8th an inch. So you have to lift the spindle that much so as to not damage the the tool holder clamp when you release the drawbar.
The reverse is true when engaging the drawbar, it sucks the tool up by 1/8th an inch and thus the spindle should move down at the same time.
On my system when I release that drawbar the tool falls out if there is nothing to catch it.
I would call Alex from CNCDepot or email him tomorrow and ask him.
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Touche my friend, touche!
Just as a follow-up, I did talk with Alex and he gave me some suggestions on cleaning the ball race in the ATC and putting anti-seize on the taper. The ATC seems to be working just fine now.
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Yay!
Yeah, that scared me. If the tool didn’t just fall out then you would always rip the carousel table off the mount.
The table for the carousel has to wiggle a certain amount both up and down and side to side or it wears out really quick. Any significant force required to extract the tool would be very bad even for tool holder mounts.
Its a good thing to know though as it will be just another thing to watch for as an operator.
I have a billion sensors for all the other mistakes a user could make but that is one I can’t imagine how I would instrument 
Fortunately, my mounts seem to break off easily - the bolts just rip right out of the plastic. I don’t plan on “fixing” that. Maybe I’ll run the sensor signal through a wire wrapped around everything, so a failure would break the wire also. Maybe that’s where the estop wire should go 
For background: Linuxcnc 2.8 defaults its G64 to “as inaccurate as you like” which was enough to make it “swoop” through the tool clip at full speed instead of gently inserting it. The plastic gave without hesitation. Robots are dangerous!
It’s patched in 2.9 and I’ve backported the patch to my local build.
I don’t think “failure to grab” would be as dangerous, but it might still break the mount if it pushes the toolholder down too far. At least it would leave the spindle unknowningly empty instead of unknownly loaded.
Well, the tool holder clamps I use are the ISO30 standard one which is a piece of cheap steel with ABS molder around it. The carousel table is two parts to allow flexing by a little more than an 1/8th of an inch without bending which is required for drawbar operation. So the design can resist a substantial force but yours sounded stuck.
That was why I moved to a retracting carousel more than just getting my workspace back. Using the spindle to dock the tool will always end poorly. The carousel instead extends and grabs the tool. On our machines it is not uncommon to lose steps in the Z axis. Which is why the tool breakage sensor is so important. On a more professional system it would just be “breakage.” On ours its “breakage +”
Yeah, mine were stuck as in “death grip on the tool holder” stuck. I’m using cncdepot’s clamps, which seem to be solid plastic, but I think my Z motor could break them. I’ve 3D printed one or two and they seem to work as well. I don’t plan on relying on those, but it’s nice to have a backup strategy.
As for the 1/8", I’ve tuned the gcode so move the spindle in sync with the grab/release, so the clamp hardly moves. The plastic stands for them have some flex as well. It actually worked better than I expected
As for losing Z steps, I’m using servos, so I shouldn’t. I suppose if that were a problem, first, I’d try to solve it, second, you could probe the Z+ end stop every time you use the tool rack.
Unfortunately, part of my brain is now busy trying to imagine a tool clamp stand that is flexible but breaks in a known location so a switch can detect that…
Yep, you will just pull those poor little M4 screws out of the ball screw in that Z axis like they never had a thread on them.
I am doing a video update and I wanted to show the control system gland plate and all of the connectors. I could add a sensor for that but I am running out of sensor ports! Just wait until you see the crazy that gland plate has turned out to be.
One advantage of the Mesa 7i76 I’m using is that you can just add more cards as needed, but my idea for the tool sensors was to use 4 outputs and 4 inputs on the card, in a matrix (with diodes), to sense 16 switches with one cat5 cable. In theory you could use 4 outputs and 1 input if you can multiplex them with relays, but if you’re that desperate, you expand to another card.
The software is more complicated that way, but software is free
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Oh, that sad little “Ethernet smooth stepper” thingy is just absolutely bare bones on a good day.
Nope, in fact that is my “selling feature.” The AvidCNC box has no ports left to run a complex system like a retracting ring tool carousel. This will be a plug-n-play system.
It’s ModBus so it will plug into any LinuxCNC based system as well.
