Apollo Construction Diary

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diyAudio Member
Joined 2004
Hi ShinOBIWAN

Did you finish the website? I used to use a combination of Dreamweaver, fireworks and Photoshop and mash up a bit of CSS, then Wordpress I now use Muse, got my site up in about a day 8ballaudio.com

Happy to help out if you need it.

Thanks Adam,

I've got a basic functional shell of a website. The content is lagging behind though so its not particularly interesting right now.
 
diyAudio Member
Joined 2004
OK this thread is long overdue an update and its not for lack of trying either!

Believe me when I say CNC is a dirty word in this house now. I've been wrestling with it for about a year now and its cost roughly double the original price tag of the cnc to put right all the problem the cowboy manufacturer introduced when he spewed this abomination into being. There is some small justice in that they are now out of business - oh no there goes my warranty!

Its been completely rebuilt and there's a huge number of fixes and upgrades along the way. Too many to list but suffice to say its now a competent machine able make absolute mince meat of wood and quite good with harder materials such as steel and alloys.

For the CNC boffins out there. It happily cuts MDF at 6m/min, rapids at upto 12m/min although I prefer to knock it back to 10m/min to leave some margin. Has repeatable accuracy to 0.03mm and acceleration is in the region of 1-1.5m/s^2 depending. Profile rails all around, inductive proximity switches, huge reinforcement throughout the whole machine compared to before and lots of other stuff that cost an arm and a leg! lol Ah well you only live once and if your going to do something then do it right etc.

The machine is with a company near me who specialises in machinery of all kinds but will be back here within a couple of weeks. I'll be posting some vids of it in action shortly after.

In the meantime here's the obligatory model for the cnc along with a couple more of the Apollo for good measure. I've switched over to using a material called Valchromat instead of MDF and look forward to working with this, its a hybrid of solid surface and fibre based boards such as MDF.

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diyAudio Member
Joined 2004
Let me know if you want a hand.

Out of interest what renderer does Solidworks use (I make the assumption your using Solidworks) It looks like V-ray but I could be mistaken.

Thanks again Adam, I might just take you up on that once I get back to looking at it. Right now I'm itching to build stuff so it could be some time.

The Photoworks render packaged within Solidworks isn't great. Its ok for use to help you visualise a model whilst your working away in solidworks. Its very good for maintaining a smooth workflow like that, just hit the render preview and within seconds you've got an overview. But I can't get on with it when trying to produce good quality images. Its definitely my ineptitude with the software because I've seen some stunning images produced by it.

I get along much better with a package called keyshot and that's what I've used whenever I post images here.
 
diyAudio Member
Joined 2004
I mostly use the base materials included with the package with some small tweak here and there but do sometimes create new one's if there's nothing in the library that suits the purpose. Mostly your good to go though as there's often something in the same category that can be tweaked to get the desired look.
 
diyAudio Member
Joined 2004
Big update on the CNC. Its now working. Yep hard to believe I know!

Here's a bunch of images showing the highlights of the changes needed to get it in shape.

Workshop:
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http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=326727&stc=1&d=1359324618[img]

Couple of cnc images:
[IMG]https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=326718&stc=1&d=1359323333

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Bed Reinforcements:
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Dust extraction:
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diyAudio Member
Joined 2004
Touch probe for setting work piece height:
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Fixed probe plate for semi automatic tool changes:
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One of the proximity switches used for homing/limits:
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Shuttle jog pad:
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Bottom of the cnc base was kinda wasted space so a couple of doors and a floor were added to allow storage of sheets.
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