Wolincircus.com

ACE Hardware Dies To the Giant

Little hometown ACE Hardware can’t make it in today’s world with giants like Home Depot and Lowes. I went in during their 80 percent off liquidation to the bare walls as they were going out of business and scored on some sweet hardware. I purchased them for 15 bucks a cube which included all the hardware. Awesome!

Here’s some other pictures from around my shop as it currently stands. My dad gave me his lathe which he didn’t want. It has some really nice tooling. I am hoping to make it CNC in the near future.

Here’s my CNC machine as it sits now.

Christmas R8 Collet Toolchest

I wanted to build an R8 collet holder for my dad’s mill. So that was my idea for his Christmas present. I didn’t do a very good job of documenting the progress, so here are a few pics of the final project.

The little photos were sunk into the wood with my CNC machine. The black lettering was an isolation operation on my CNC machine. The entire top was coated with a clear epoxy resin. The smoky black around the name “Dale Wolin” was a result of what I learned was called thermal runaway. The epoxy resin heated up because the pour was about 1/2 inch think. Here is a closeup of the the photos.

I chose some spring loaded internal hinges so that the lid would open by itself and stay open.

Here is the center of the project. The R8 collet holder spins on a 1.25” bearing countersunk into the bottom of the wood. It is difficult to see, but there is engraved into the wood a label for each of the collets.

The drawers ended up being way smaller than I had anticipated but still functional. It was very difficult to mount the slides in the narrow openings. The sliding action was not very stellar so my dad actually tweaked them and made them slide like glass. Great job dad!

I really blew it on the finish. The paint I chose was a one part epoxy resin. It was pretty gloppy and dripped in places. So disappointing considering all the work. But, just like any project, if I were to do it a second time it would be perfect.

Windmill Generator Project

Last Christmas my brother Andy gave me an aluminum cylinder. This Christmas I gave it back to him in the form of a windmill generator.

You can see the aluminum cylinder in this picture. Attached the cylinder is the encoder wheel on one end and the rotor mechanism on the other. The rotor houses 12 rare earth magnets purchased from otherpower.com

The blades were cut out on my CNC machine. This was the first real project where I made several of the exact same thing on my CNC machine. The satisfaction that comes from making 10 identical pieces is hard to describe! The hub was made by first cutting angled pieces on my table saw and then gluing them to a 6” x 1/4” MDF circle. My CNC machine trimmed the edges of the hub to size.

Here is a closeup of the hub which was turned on my dad’s lathe.

The coils were wound on my dad’s lathe (by my dad) using Elmer’s glue as a bonding agent to keep the 28 gauge wire from exploding once it was taken out of the coil winder. These coils were connected in series and represent several thousand turns of wire.

Once the generator develops more than 3 volts, it powers up the PIC18F452 microprocessor and an LCD screen displays:

1. RPM
2. Number of Rotations
3. Blade Tip Speed
4. Time Elapsed
5. Bible Verse

An series of 8 LEDs made up an LED tree which cycled as each finger of the encoder passed by the optical sensor.