Some time ago I rescued a Craftsman air compressor from a dumpster. It was one of the cheap oil-less compressor type and the silicone rubber seal around the air outlet tube was blown out. I managed to repair the connection several times but my fixes would never last.

I have been waiting to get my CNC machine running so I could make a new head that would use a threaded fitting instead of the original, less than durable slide in gasket, and that's what I did today.

In the comments about my CNC mill project over at Hack-A-Day, Jarkman posted a link to this really beautiful CNC'd brass scarab brooch and I can't help thinking that this would make a lovely computer mouse too!

Last  year I bought a broken Bridgeport Series II CNC milling machine with the intent to convert it to run on ArtSoft's Mach3 PC controller with Gecko G203V stepper drivers. 

Well, the original intent was to replace only the BOSS 5 controller, but things got complicated.

. . . 

One of my goals for this year is to add some real machining capabilities to my shop. I've been in the market for a milling machine since the beginning of the year and when I saw a Bridgeport series II CNC mill pop up on Craiglist for $1000 I decided to jump at it.

This is an older CNC mill that is in great shape as far as the iron is concerned but, according to the seller, had exhibited some flakiness with the controller after being moved. These things are pretty primitive TTL logic cards feeding power Darlington output transistor that drive stepper motors so I have no doubt that I will be able to fix what ever may be amiss--most likely the boards just need to be re-seated.

Click through and check out my new toy!

A couple weeks ago I began work on a RepRap machine.  A RepRap is a desktop fabricator or 3D printer that is capable of making all of the parts of itself that are not stock off-the-self items. It's a 2 1/2 axis CNC plastic extruder that fabricates parts by laying down layers of melted plastic, one atop the next. 

RepRap was conceived from the beginning as an Open Source project with the intent that, once self-replication was acheived, a community of "rappers" would allow it to evolve with each contributed improvement being merged back into the machines "DNA." 

Hence the code name "Darwin" for the initial design. 

RepRap acheived self replication in May of 2008 and there are now hundreds of people building and experimenting with this Open Source hardware platform.

More after the cut