Some new toys for my Taig

[budman68]

Rather than clog up tweakie's wood routing thread with my garbage, I thought I'd start a new one for some of the things I've been working on.

The first one is a vac jig I just completed for engraving some parts
that I make. As you can see it is a basic vac pump that has a filter,
vac gage and connects via the coil hose to a ball valve which is
connected to the jig I've made. The jig consists of a hollowed out
base with an o-ring groove and o-ring to seal to the top plate when
installed.

The top plate has a nesting cavity with it's own o-ring to hold the
parts I make (triangle with holes) for engraving. This allows a nice
quick change from one part to the next. What's nice about this setup
is the fact that I can make more top plates and interchange them from
one style of part to the next via dowel pins for location each top
plate.

I'm so please with the way this works!

The next "toy" is the LED Spindle light. I tore apart an outdoor LED
low voltage lighting lamp ($3.05 on clearance at Lowes!) that has 6
superbright LEDs.

In the first pic you can see the roll of tape and how many shadows
are on the inside and this gets even worse when you get the headstock
down low with a cutter inside and you're trying to move in on a
pocket or a similar situation.

I've seen the LED rings that others made for their X3 mills and
thought that would be perfect for me but I'd have to come up with a
different mounting idea as there's no room under the headstock for
something like this. So a sort of "collar" would have to do. It's
made from black acetal 375 thick and the pocket depth on mine is .250
but needless to say, feel free to modify it any way you'd like.

Sorry I didn't get any pics of the inside of the housing inside but
when you see the dxf for it , you'll get the jist of the pocketing for the wires. As for
led hole locations, those are totally up to you and the cover cap can
be made using the same outside profile as the base. For the wiring, I
used a 12 volt wall wart transfomer that is plugged into my main
outlet center and turns on when I power everything up. You could add
a inline rotary switch if you desire though.

Just thought I'd pass this along as it's a quick project that really
helps out, just don't make these up and sell them on ebay- lol!!!

Note, I now see that someone is selling something just like this (
but more professional looking lol!!!) but the 2 lights in the front
would not be adequate enough as I've palyed with light location for a
bit to get it evenly spaced. Since my lights are all around the
spindle, it spreads the light out so you have light in the back as
well without ANY shadows.

Hope you enjoyed these!

Dave-

[budman68]

more vac jig pics

[budman68]

Now for the LED pics...

[budman68]

More spindle light pics..

[Chaoticone]

Good work Budman. Both will be very useful to you I'm sure. Vaccum fixtures are the bomb. 

Brett

[Overloaded]

Hey Dave,
  That's pretty sweet, nice to be able to see what's going on.
I'm not familiar with a Taig, what is this pin/plunger deal ? Is it a lock or stop of sorts ?
I notice it's up and down in different photos.
Just curious......REAL nice work, keep on keepin' on,
RC

[budman68]

Thanks for the kind words fellas and no, RC, that's not moving, I just finally got tired of it being in the way at times and cut it off as they're pressed in there and can't be removed unless you remove the table and get a puller on it, lol!

I just took the pics "around" the time that was done.

Good eye, though! 

[Tweakie.CNC]

Brilliant work Budman.

[RICH]

Dave,
Really nice. Sure does beat carpet tape or glue to hold stuff down. Picked up a vacuum pump some time ago and planned on making a table but that's as far as it got.
Have a few questions.
What is the gasket size & material and where purchased?
Have you considered making a generic plate with numerous holes yet?
Anything to consider when porting the base in terms of volume?
RICH

 

[budman68]

Thanks, fellas - 

Have a few questions.
What is the gasket size & material and where purchased?
Have you considered making a generic plate with numerous holes yet?
Anything to consider when porting the base in terms of volume?

Rich, the gasket material I use is Viton AS568A Aerospace Standard  1/16th "O ring" material and I leave it about .002 above the surface of the aluminum. The O rings run oversized so get the oring material before you start machining - 

As for the Plate with random holes, funny you mentioned that as I'm in the middle of desgning one at the moment. It's not done as obviously there's no holes for the pump as of yet but you'll get the idea from the pics below - (pay no attention to the sheet metal pop up balloon up on the left. I had my cursor over that function when I copied the screen shot -  )

As for porting the base in terms of volume, since I'm not a math major by any means, I have read that the more area to create the vacuum, the stronger the pull. I experimented with abs plastic first and came up with the design you see as it worked perfectly for me. 

Hope that helps!