Blog Posts

MITERS CNC SAGA

one day, sometime in the late spring of 2013, an interesting machine was spotted in a first floor building 3 corridor.

is that.. a CNC mill?

furthermore, is that.. cruft?

An email of the following form was sent to the occupant of the room next to where the machine sat on its pallet:

Professor,

Is the CNC mill currently outside 3-158 is being removed?  I know of a student shop on campus which would be quite happy to make good use of it.
Thank you,

To which there was a reply:

Which student shop?
Are you available sometime today to swing by my office Rm 3-154 to discuss the machining center?
Turns out, Prof. Ian Hunter’s lab had replaced it with a newer machine, and they were looking for a place to put it.
Email wankery ensued.  Topics included: “does it work?”, and “where will it go?”
>>does it work?
It was confirmed with a grad student in prof. Hunter’s lab that the machine “should work,” and that it had been turned on in the past year.  Good enough.
>>where will it go?
MITERS has lots of space, right?
DSCN9845
 maybe not.
In spite of this, the overwhelming consensus was that it should come to MITERS.

tyler pulls millIt didn’t take long for MITERSfolk to descend upon the prize.  A pallet jack was borrowed from the donor lab, and Tyler pulled the half ton machine from building 3, down a freight elevator, through the basement, to the Stata loading dock where a Uhaul awaited.

does it fit?

There, Bayley crufted some keyboards while Tyler, Dane, and Peter lined up the lift gate with the truck.

loading 3mars

meanwhile, a group of people led by Mars took apart MITERS and played stuff-tetris until a space was made.on the way to MITERS

unloadingunloadingdzThere’s no lift gate at N52, but things worked out just fine in the end.

Then, summer happened.  A few brave souls were the first to reconnect, debug, and revive the underused machine.
see: http://yameb.blogspot.com/2013/08/getting-dyna-myte-1007-cnc-mill-working.html

Hobby Creek Soldering Octopus!

We’re happy to say that we received new octopuses from . They’re extremely nice helping hands with robust, twist-able arms attached to billet stands

The octopus in its natural environment

The best part is they also sent a board holder, which conveniently attaches to the base of the round helping hands.

Landon attractively holding the octopus

Jan 29, 2015 Update: Snow shenanigans, green growing things @ MITERS

hmm, a lot of snow happened

fan sled?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0IGhmKxNY0

ski EV bike -> motor fire 🙁

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCIw5v9vZ4k

and ski scooter… video from recent blizzard sometime soon, in the meantime:

http://transistor-man.com/electricscooter_tundraupgrades.html

Tundra Mode from Dane Kouttron on Vimeo.

 

 

here are some green things growing at MITERS

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mung bean sprouts!

P1070286

 

mango trees! they were doing well until we moved them up there (because the mice were nesting in them) and now we keep forgetting to water them :/ they’re… two years old at this point?

 

oops just kidding, that last one isn’t growing, it’s just drying. it is green though.

 

over six months!

six months without a blog post. well, here are some pictures of MITERS

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here is a wheel being drilled into by an A123 powered drill

IMG_0352

IMG_0353

a tire crown was made

 

IMG_0354

 

recent cruft: steering wheel with airbag inside

will it be refound in 10 years?

let us know

Machining a propeller on the MITERS DYNA-MYTE! http://vimeo.com/83479749

Machining a propeller on the MITERS DYNA-MYTE! http://vimeo.com/83479749CNC Machining A Propellerbillet to propeller converter, some floppies required!

Machining a propeller on the MITERS DYNA-MYTE!

http://vimeo.com/83479749


CNC Machining A Propeller

billet to propeller converter, some floppies required!

HI MITERS!

Lots of stuff has happened!

Yay!

A Honk band came to visit.

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We had a meeting!

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We went to Maker Faire! Lots of electric vehicles arrived:

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It was raining so we set up a tarp.

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Also we tried to fly kites but it was too crowded to fly them for long.

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Cappie and Sheep made t-shirts. It was possibly their first project at MITERS.

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There was carbon-fiber epoxy shenanigans!

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Okay other members of MITERS! Go forth and blog!

DRSSTC 2

Greetings everyone!

With the semester almost ending, I’m glad that my second DRSS-Tesla Coil is finally done! DRSSTC 2 began almost a year ago with the goal of making my first tesla coil using brick-style IGBTs.


Tesla Coil 2

DRSSTC makes 4 feet of sparks look easy, in MITERS

First Version

The project began when I bought two Toshiba IGBT half-bridge modules on ebay, good for 150A 600V. The original plan was to build a compact and powerful DRSSTC running this full bridge, with about a foot long secondary. The coil also uses a revised version of Steve Ward’s UD2 as the driver. After many months of work, I finally got everything put together. Unfortunately, initial tests were worrying, and I soon found out that one of my IGBTs was half-dead. With the lack of time and money, I wasn’t able to continue with these bricks.

Revision 2

I managed to get hold of a CM200DU-24F 200A 1200V IGBT and decided to make a half-bridge coil instead. The CM200 bricks are larger, so I wasn’t able to fit a fullbridge inside the box I had already made. Finally, this worked perfectly and everything came together.

Specifications:

– CM200 Half Bridge
– 208VAC input (2 leads from 3 Phase, though the coil was designed for 240VAC operation)
– 13″ x 3.5″Secondary, ~2000 turns
– 16″ x 4″ Toroid (I want to get a spun one someday)



Video of the coil in action!

For more information, please visit www.loneoceans.com/labs/ – writeup with full details in progress!

🙂