Binky Update - Feb 2025

There's nothing else to go wrong. I can't think of a single thing left.

The little mill rebuild went very well indeed. Not straightforward at all to convert what is essentially a small manual mill that had subsequently been upgraded to use stepper motors for control - to one that uses ball screws and not massively worn-out lead screws. When you need a mill to make the parts to fix the mill, some "imaginative" work holding solutions had to be found.

Anyway, we fixed it and after calibrating the motion, (the ball screws are four times 'faster' than the old lead screws) it worked absolutely perfectly. Spot-on from the word go. Elation ensued along with a celebratory brew. However, our joy was short lived because just 48 hours later the HDD failed again and left us with a large immovable paperweight.

Head bashing, teeth gnashing, and a lot of fruity language followed. The only bright spot was that after the first HDD failure, we'd been using a removable USB drive to store programmes and information on and that had survived intact. Long story short, we now have a new (refurbished) PC running dual SSD hard drives backing up every night and a mill that's never been more accurate or faster.

And that's a good thing, because we've been making more printed circuit boards, only much smaller and using the mill to cut out tiny channels in copper clad boards to create daughter boards holding more LED's. The 3D printer has also been deployed, and I can't tell you what a boon something like that is to have in the workshop. A working knowledge of Fusion 360 or the like is helpful but not having to fabricate certain parts and just see them appear off the PEI plate is awesome. And then print some more after tweaking the design because your colleague's drawing and dimensions are only suited as an outline for a subtractive manufacturing process using various sized end mills... (One or two of you might understand my pain there.)

The long and the short of it is that episode 40 will be with you in March and it finally feels like it's actually coming together - and that's a massive relief because I'm not sure how much more grief either of us could have taken. The dash looks great, and the backlighting is better than either of us could have hoped - it wants to be, it's taken enough bloody time.

Thanks, as always for your support. You guys mean the world to us.

Cheers,

Nik and Richard.