Carbozzi was created by 2 spearos (1 corsican (Romain) and 1 from French riviera (Christophe ). They don't make speargun anymore. The brand name has been recovered by a friend of them (Florent Next to Marseille) who works CF covering or handle grip
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GeckoSub Mirage Evo - And Adventures in 3D Printing Speargun Parts
- Thread starter Diving Gecko
- Start date
I have been away from the whole cable-pneumo threads for years, hadn't even seen that newish Seawolf so my answer isn't fully formed, yet. For now, I'd say if you stick to a classic pneumatic gun you will find that they are actually incredibly simple. Even moreso if you don't need a power regulator. If you go with a 13mm ID shooting barrel, you can mix and match parts between many brands going back to the 80s and then fabricate the ones you want, but there's actually not much need to make any parts yourself.
As for the Dreamair, from memory it's quite a lot more complicated. Especially those conical winding drums aren't easy to machine. Velair seems a bit simpler than the Dreamair, but havent' read the thread, yet. The main difference is that there wont be many parts for you to source so you would have to make everything yourself. E.g. for classic oleos, have a pick of any 13mm piston from a range of brands but for a Dreamair type gun, you'd have to make your own.
I think the cable-pneumos could be a viable crossover for people who think they can't get used to a normal oleo. But I doubt you will get any more power out of a cable gun than a vacuum-muzzled, pure pneumatic. It's likely that the cable-pneumatics have higher losses in their "drive train" and shaft track than a classic pneumatic which only has friction losses from the piston and a tiny bit at the muzzle and line slider.
But you do get some advantages with the cable guns like a very high handle, nice sightline and the ability to use whatever regular bandgun shafts you want. And if you made your own, you also get the choice of some really nice triggers.
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Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner! A Mini Lathe Rotisserie!
OK, since I actually shot a video of this, let me spare you folks the trouble of reading yet another lengthy post of mine and post the video already:
(Apologies for the mess and shady wiring)
And if you want to torture yourself, here goes pretty much the same, just in many words and a few pics:
Yes, I am weird - I go out of my way to jack up the side project count. This thread is supposedly about making a Mirage style gun out of a modern Mares handle, just one, just one gun that works... Nothing more, nothing less and we are 30 pages and countless side projects into that, haha.
But the recent challenge of making my CF tubes leak proof made me think about rotisseries - think spinning BBQed chicken - and I thought too much so of course I had to make one. A rotisserie that is - not the chicken. Honestly, I even bought some cheap, low RPM, DC motors but they are on the slow boat so wont be here for another few weeks. But then I thought, hey, I have a lathe - how can I make it spin even slower...
Let me back up a bit - why would I even want to spin the lathe slower? Well, I want to mount the CF tube in it and then add epoxy to the inside ends and turn it slowly while it cures. Which should give a nice, possibly perfectly even coating . It's a trick widely used by custom fishing rod builders when they attach the eyelets and other trim and need the epoxy to flow evenly around the rod. They often talk about speeds as low as 5-10 RPM but the slowest my lathe can spin on its brushless motor is 60ish RPM which doesn't work - tried it already. So, I will mount an extra, much slower motor... yep. One more motor, haha.
Stepper motors are perfect for this - and you can see the one I used at the top left in this pic:
The bracket is FDM 3D-printed and it's using two bolt holes that were already in that alu motor mounting plate - they are meant for a rotary encoder shown in this pic:
The rotory encoder is needed for an ELS (Electronic LeadsScrew) controller that I have on the lathe but it's acting up so I will be trying a different system in the weeks to come - which will also need the encoder. But for the rotisserie, the encoder isn't needed so if I only have to deal with two screws to swap from encoder to rotisserie motor on the rare occasion I need to epoxy coat CF tubes, I think that's OK.
(On the note of the ELS - the whole idea is that I will never have to deal with manual change gears ever again. Right now, even if I wanted to, I couldn't even put the gears back on the lathe so I really hope to make the new ELS works.)
Anyhow, back to the rotisserie.
I am using the same timing belt as the encoder used, but I needed a smaller pulley with a bigger center hole in it to make it work. But drawing up and printing pulleys is actually pretty easy - there's a parametric pulley plug-in for Fusion (the CAM software, I use) so you just spec the number or teeth, pulley height and center bore dimension - and then I changed a two small things after that. One was to add the little flat in the inner bore to match the flat on the stepper motor shaft and then I added some chamfers so I don't have 90d overhangs which helps with the printing.
Took about an hour to resin print and it came out great :
The marking is debossed, 3mm tall, 0.3mm deep - resin really works well on small intricate parts. The challenge is the shrinkage which on a circular part like this is easy to account for. Not so on bigger parts with more elaborate geometry.
For holding the CF tube in the chuck, I FDM printed a small tube holder. The idea being if the epoxy does leak out, at least it doesn't do so inside the lathe chuck. Also, it takes the pucker factor out of having to use the real chuck on the CF tubes - I am always afraid I'll crack them:
(Some horrendous layer gaps in that print (layer height is 0.48mm with a 0.6mm nozzle). Obviously my old FDM printer could do with some TLC.)
The other end of the tube is held in the steady rest as when I used the lathe for sanding the inside of the tubes - that works really well.
Cirling back to the DC motors I mentioned I had ordered, the idea was to actually make a whole standalone rotisserie out of alu extrusion with rubber rollers at each end. But using the lathe ends up being way less work and less parts. "Only" a small side project, not a whole project on its own.
Besides a power supply and driver for the stepper, we need a motor controller and for that I used a stepper controller that I had lying around. Unsurprisingly, the controller was bought for a different project I haven't had time to get into yet
:
Anyhow, at least some 3D printing content - the thread title still alludes to that...
OK, since I actually shot a video of this, let me spare you folks the trouble of reading yet another lengthy post of mine and post the video already:
(Apologies for the mess and shady wiring)
And if you want to torture yourself, here goes pretty much the same, just in many words and a few pics:
Yes, I am weird - I go out of my way to jack up the side project count. This thread is supposedly about making a Mirage style gun out of a modern Mares handle, just one, just one gun that works... Nothing more, nothing less and we are 30 pages and countless side projects into that, haha.
But the recent challenge of making my CF tubes leak proof made me think about rotisseries - think spinning BBQed chicken - and I thought too much so of course I had to make one. A rotisserie that is - not the chicken. Honestly, I even bought some cheap, low RPM, DC motors but they are on the slow boat so wont be here for another few weeks. But then I thought, hey, I have a lathe - how can I make it spin even slower...
Let me back up a bit - why would I even want to spin the lathe slower? Well, I want to mount the CF tube in it and then add epoxy to the inside ends and turn it slowly while it cures. Which should give a nice, possibly perfectly even coating . It's a trick widely used by custom fishing rod builders when they attach the eyelets and other trim and need the epoxy to flow evenly around the rod. They often talk about speeds as low as 5-10 RPM but the slowest my lathe can spin on its brushless motor is 60ish RPM which doesn't work - tried it already. So, I will mount an extra, much slower motor... yep. One more motor, haha.
Stepper motors are perfect for this - and you can see the one I used at the top left in this pic:
The bracket is FDM 3D-printed and it's using two bolt holes that were already in that alu motor mounting plate - they are meant for a rotary encoder shown in this pic:
The rotory encoder is needed for an ELS (Electronic LeadsScrew) controller that I have on the lathe but it's acting up so I will be trying a different system in the weeks to come - which will also need the encoder. But for the rotisserie, the encoder isn't needed so if I only have to deal with two screws to swap from encoder to rotisserie motor on the rare occasion I need to epoxy coat CF tubes, I think that's OK.
(On the note of the ELS - the whole idea is that I will never have to deal with manual change gears ever again. Right now, even if I wanted to, I couldn't even put the gears back on the lathe so I really hope to make the new ELS works.)
Anyhow, back to the rotisserie.
I am using the same timing belt as the encoder used, but I needed a smaller pulley with a bigger center hole in it to make it work. But drawing up and printing pulleys is actually pretty easy - there's a parametric pulley plug-in for Fusion (the CAM software, I use) so you just spec the number or teeth, pulley height and center bore dimension - and then I changed a two small things after that. One was to add the little flat in the inner bore to match the flat on the stepper motor shaft and then I added some chamfers so I don't have 90d overhangs which helps with the printing.
Took about an hour to resin print and it came out great :
The marking is debossed, 3mm tall, 0.3mm deep - resin really works well on small intricate parts. The challenge is the shrinkage which on a circular part like this is easy to account for. Not so on bigger parts with more elaborate geometry.
For holding the CF tube in the chuck, I FDM printed a small tube holder. The idea being if the epoxy does leak out, at least it doesn't do so inside the lathe chuck. Also, it takes the pucker factor out of having to use the real chuck on the CF tubes - I am always afraid I'll crack them:
(Some horrendous layer gaps in that print (layer height is 0.48mm with a 0.6mm nozzle). Obviously my old FDM printer could do with some TLC.)
The other end of the tube is held in the steady rest as when I used the lathe for sanding the inside of the tubes - that works really well.
Cirling back to the DC motors I mentioned I had ordered, the idea was to actually make a whole standalone rotisserie out of alu extrusion with rubber rollers at each end. But using the lathe ends up being way less work and less parts. "Only" a small side project, not a whole project on its own.
Besides a power supply and driver for the stepper, we need a motor controller and for that I used a stepper controller that I had lying around. Unsurprisingly, the controller was bought for a different project I haven't had time to get into yet
:Anyhow, at least some 3D printing content - the thread title still alludes to that...
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You lathe mods are supreme. Will archive the idea for later!
Any chance you'll do a small production run of CF tubes? I've got 3 guns I'd love to lighten up.
Any chance you'll do a small production run of CF tubes? I've got 3 guns I'd love to lighten up.
Hehe, thanks. The mods can be a bit hacky around the edges but mostly they work.
CF Tubes
Honestly, I have two issues with selling tubes. First of all, the idea of something blowing up. But that said, I will finally start blowing up some cutoffs and we will have more of an idea of the safety margin of these. Secondly, I am now based on a provincial island in the Philippines and postal services in and out of here are very hit and miss. Things going missing for weeks, sometimes months at a time.
What I think would work better would be for me to order just a few tubes for myself next time around - including the ideas I have to make the inside smoother and possible with a layer of kevlar, too. And then if they work well for me, I can handover the maker's contact to you. Even though I buy directly from a very Chinese shopping site, I would think they can ship anywhere. I can certainly try to ask them and help set it up.
But remind me on this once you see the tubes arrive and me posting about them. Haven't ordered them yet, I want to blow up some of the older ones first to get a sense of what wall thickness I should go with for the new ones. Shouldn't take too long before I do that, though.
The Lathe
Back to the lathe. It's the infamous mini lathe but boy has it been a blast. Also, it's been a real stepping stone, without it I would never have gotten the CNC.
For anyone considering a mini lathe, I would say go for it. Mine does have a fair bit of upgrades, though but I will say that a quick change tool post and a better brushless motor are the two main ones, you'd need. The motor upgrade can be had from factory now. And then I use insert tooling for everything, it's the best "cheat" ever in machining. It's cheap off of the usual suspects and you'll never have to learn how to sharpen a cutting tool
The lastest "major" thing I did was to pull the whole gear plate off - the one holding the change gears and tumbler lever - and install a homemade alu motor bracket. I have a CNC router now, so it was a cool project to get done. The 750w BLDC motor which I upgraded to years ago actually sat on a 3D printed motor bracket that was always meant to be temporary but somehow it survived all these years.
I also recently put in new bearings, angular roller ones, but one of them runs a bit rough so may have to re-do that. It arrived like that but thought I could break it in with some good grease.
The main thing I really want on this lathe is a good ELS but I also don't want to spend too much. The first, cheap, Chinese one I put on doesn't work - it doesn't stay in sync, fine for using it as a power feed, not so for cutting threads which is its main purpose. Since I am now upgrading to another ELS system (buy cheap, buy twice...) I am kinda hoping it is the first controller that is to blame and not something else. Because if it's not the controller, the new one will have the same issue, haha. It may be some electrical noise but I am really weak in the electronics game but will try to get more of a proper electrical cabinet done for the lathe as part of the ELS upgrade.
Here's a teaser for the upcoming ELS upgrade:
In short, it's a touchscreen Human Machine Interface (HMI) for the NanoELS H5.
Amongst the more advanced ELS systems, it is one of the cheapest (and probably the most advanced) but it wasn't cheap enough that I was gonna go for it. But then I found this screen - the main part of the project - at a steal on the used market. Screen protector is still on it, hence the "scracthes" and bubbles.
I will eventually make a nice enclosure for it and a few buttons and switches. There's no reason for the bezel to be that big.
The Ultimate Lathe Rotisserie
But on the note of motor upgrades in relation to the rotisserie project, I was very close to swapping the otherwise capable 750w BLDC out for a 750w servo motor a little while back. I can get them cheap used in China but I opted against it in the end.
But if I had actually put a servo motor on the spindle, the rotisserie would have been even easier as a servo can spin as slow as you want it (still with plenty of torque) so I wouldn't have had to install that second slower spindle motor at all.
That said, there are other ways of skinning this spinning cat. E.g. if your lathe wont easily allow you to mount another motor on the back plate and drive the spindle directly, I think you could "easily" mount the motor on the carriage and drive the tube instead. So, stepper clamped to the tool post and then run a belt around the tube. You may have to 3D print a pulley of sorts to clamp onto the tube for some added grip or perhaps have gear teeth on the tube holder (the part I put into the chuck which holds the tube). That would probably be the least invasive way of doing this.
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Rotisserie In Use
Not much to report, I have been busy doing post processing on the pics from my latest photo assignment and then, deservedly lazy afterwards.
But I put a few hours in in the workshop today and finally took the rotisserie for a real spin, hohoho:
Once again, using a slow hardener is kicking my butt. I need to sit around until the epoxy sets a bit more as I don't want this gadget to run overnight. I have some other epoxy on the way with a faster hardener. For bigger, laminated parts, slow is good. Not for this stuff...
For the "epoxy nerds" out there - yes, the amine blush is pretty intense on this one. For the non-nerds, amine blush is a waxy substance that can form on the top of the epoxy during curing and it can mess with subsequent layers and bonding.
Not sure if this system (Epolam) is more prone to it, but also we had rain showers all day and it's hot and humid here even on a normal day. Also, while some sources say a faster hardener is more at risk, others say slow hardeners are worse. Either way, no biggie, it will be washed away and then sanded - that's the only redeeming fact about amine blush - it comes off with water and a bit of scrubbing.
Not much to report, I have been busy doing post processing on the pics from my latest photo assignment and then, deservedly lazy afterwards.
But I put a few hours in in the workshop today and finally took the rotisserie for a real spin, hohoho:
Once again, using a slow hardener is kicking my butt. I need to sit around until the epoxy sets a bit more as I don't want this gadget to run overnight. I have some other epoxy on the way with a faster hardener. For bigger, laminated parts, slow is good. Not for this stuff...
For the "epoxy nerds" out there - yes, the amine blush is pretty intense on this one. For the non-nerds, amine blush is a waxy substance that can form on the top of the epoxy during curing and it can mess with subsequent layers and bonding.
Not sure if this system (Epolam) is more prone to it, but also we had rain showers all day and it's hot and humid here even on a normal day. Also, while some sources say a faster hardener is more at risk, others say slow hardeners are worse. Either way, no biggie, it will be washed away and then sanded - that's the only redeeming fact about amine blush - it comes off with water and a bit of scrubbing.
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Are you aware of the fibers' properties they use over there? Very often I've come across cheaper-grade carbon fiber (T300) loaded with impurities on sites like alibaba, aliexpress etc and zero specifications on resin grade and other stuff hence I'm extremely hesitant to buy anything without further info. Costs aren't even that low, it's just that the regular spearo market is overpriced paying 100+ for nothing more than a 30mm tube. And they all buy from there too, if you ask them for those specifications they don't know them either since they didn't manufacture it.
Granted even cheap impure carbon is better than anything aluminum but I'm not going to get something that's basically borderline fiberglass for 3-4x the price of fiberglass.
Honestly, no. I just assume it's a domestically produced T300 equivalent. I did think of spec'ing T700 but let's see if they have that.
I used to live in China and I know a fair bit of people who work in manufacturing in other fields and honestly, while more and more companies build their brands properly and offer good, honest service, some will still play games - a classic is swapping to a cheaper grade material without telling the customer.
No idea where on the scale the people I order the tubes from fall but I will just assume it's T300'ish and then order longer than needed and blow up the cutoffs to to give me some peace of mind.
As for the swapping, that normally happens when the customer has tried to bargain too much. The factory still want the order and agree to the low balling offer - because otherwise someone else surely will - and then they go for cheaper materials than specced to actually make a profit.
I mostly shoot airguns but I do have a few bandguns and did order one cuttlefish shaped barrel that was so crooked it wasn't even funny. It was through a local dealer here in the Philippines and he had no clue. That's another thing, to keep prices low, many Chinese manufacturers don't like to reject stuff, so they'll send out stuff that shouldn't have left the factory - also, it's very likely that not a single worker or manager has ever speared and thus, they think a bit of a bend is no big deal.
Another example: I used to buy Chinese dive torches and the amount of times I found alu swarf in the o-rings or the wrong size o-ring was staggering. Again, I went for the cheapest options and I knew how to make them work most of the time.
As for the simple CF tubes I need, I've never had one that wasn't straight. But it also helps that the mandrels for these are 38mm. When I bought tubes for my 16mm polespear - they were not straight at all.
If you want swank tubes out of real Toray with a higher modulus, I am sure you can get it. Just don't expect it to be super cheap. Personally, I would add the cost of flights and hotels and be at the factory when they make your batch. Also, make a proper contract stating tolerances and materials. I am sure if they have the molds and if the molds are well made, they can make them to whatever quality you need but they'd likely want you to place a decent quantity.
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Chicken With Orange
It happens, it's frustrating, but sanding will fix it. The lesson is, you can never clean and degrease too much.
Also, I sped up the rotisserie a bit (20rpm now) and the offcut came out good, pretty smooth and level.
Update: The other end came out nice enough, no orange peel. So, it wasn't the cup, mixing stick or brush being contaminated, it's gotta be in the tube itself. I guess I cleaned the other end better than this one.
It happens, it's frustrating, but sanding will fix it. The lesson is, you can never clean and degrease too much.
Also, I sped up the rotisserie a bit (20rpm now) and the offcut came out good, pretty smooth and level.
Update: The other end came out nice enough, no orange peel. So, it wasn't the cup, mixing stick or brush being contaminated, it's gotta be in the tube itself. I guess I cleaned the other end better than this one.
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Alignment Marks
I sanded down the orange peel on the real CF tube and coated it again and then sanded it again - and the tube looks ready for another assembly attempt. If it doesn't hold air now, I have no idea what's going on.
But before I do that, I wanted to do a little modification that I have wanted for years: Alignment marks on the top of the tube. It's not a big thing but still, quite helpful when you assemble the gun so you don't have to sight down the tube trying to get the nose cone lined up perfectly with the handle - just align the marks and you're done.
The idea was to mill a very small, shallow channel in the top of the tube. Rather easy on the CNC (in manual mode) and I knew I could hold the tube in this fixture I made a little while back:
The only real challenge was how to make sure the tube didn't rotate when I flipped it around as the marks on each end have to, well, line up with each other. So, I made another little clamp out of alu. Only one quick snap of the machining but it was some pretty big chips:
To make sure the two fixtures where on the same plane, I used the floor:
When they were both flat against the floor I tightened them down. (I actually double checked with a long piece of extruded alu and the fixtures were also flat against that).
No pics of the actually machining, but I used a 1.5mm flat endmill and "manually" sunk it 0.3mm into the tube and then made a 3.5mm long slot on the CNC. It looks deeper in the pic because of the side lighting. But honestly, I could also have gone less deep. I think 0.15-0.2mm would have been enough. And a 1mm endmill would have left a wide enough slot, too :
It just has to be deep enough for a blob of UV nail polish:
This is the first layer. It cures by UV, so I use a little UV-torch:
And then you do this layer by layer until it's flush with the top surface
:
I use this trick a lot on some 3D-printed freediving accessories that I make. It holds up really well.
Anyways, that was today's progress. As said, it's not a huge thing but I already know I will appreciate it when I assemble the gun.
Oh, if you're wondering if it's smart weaking the tube like this - the slots are on the "outside" of the main o-rings. Which means that there's not much force acting on this part of the tube.
I sanded down the orange peel on the real CF tube and coated it again and then sanded it again - and the tube looks ready for another assembly attempt. If it doesn't hold air now, I have no idea what's going on.
But before I do that, I wanted to do a little modification that I have wanted for years: Alignment marks on the top of the tube. It's not a big thing but still, quite helpful when you assemble the gun so you don't have to sight down the tube trying to get the nose cone lined up perfectly with the handle - just align the marks and you're done.
The idea was to mill a very small, shallow channel in the top of the tube. Rather easy on the CNC (in manual mode) and I knew I could hold the tube in this fixture I made a little while back:
The only real challenge was how to make sure the tube didn't rotate when I flipped it around as the marks on each end have to, well, line up with each other. So, I made another little clamp out of alu. Only one quick snap of the machining but it was some pretty big chips:
To make sure the two fixtures where on the same plane, I used the floor:
When they were both flat against the floor I tightened them down. (I actually double checked with a long piece of extruded alu and the fixtures were also flat against that).
No pics of the actually machining, but I used a 1.5mm flat endmill and "manually" sunk it 0.3mm into the tube and then made a 3.5mm long slot on the CNC. It looks deeper in the pic because of the side lighting. But honestly, I could also have gone less deep. I think 0.15-0.2mm would have been enough. And a 1mm endmill would have left a wide enough slot, too :
It just has to be deep enough for a blob of UV nail polish:
This is the first layer. It cures by UV, so I use a little UV-torch:
And then you do this layer by layer until it's flush with the top surface
I use this trick a lot on some 3D-printed freediving accessories that I make. It holds up really well.
Anyways, that was today's progress. As said, it's not a huge thing but I already know I will appreciate it when I assemble the gun.
Oh, if you're wondering if it's smart weaking the tube like this - the slots are on the "outside" of the main o-rings. Which means that there's not much force acting on this part of the tube.
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The Mini Lathe Gets Some Upgrades
Sorry for radio silence. I had some real work come in and then it really started bothering me how out of whack the mini lathe had become. Also, I had taken off the manual change gears a while back to put an Electronic Leadscrew (ELS) on it as I was sick and tired of manually having to find and change out gears every time I wanted to cut a new thread - and also never really having "power feed" for roughing and finishing cuts.
Anyhow, I cheaped out and the ELS I got wouldn't stay in sync. But by then it was too late to go back to the manual gears so I upgraded to a better ELS project called NanoELS H5.
It runs on an ESP32 so the HW is pretty powerful, but I personally felt the user interface could be improved and also NanoELS has become more of a CNC'ish project with ballscrews and X-motors and I didn't want that. I wanted an ELS with a normal leadscrew and no X-motor. I have a CNC lathe I need to refurbish and I want the mini lathe to stay manual but with a proper ELS and ideally DRO, too.
So, I had to design a GUI and then I had to change the FW code quite a bit. In some ways, I had to dumb it down - as the NanoELS is generally more CNC than ELS by now - but in other ways, I added some features or small improvements that weren't in the code, yet - but I don't actually know how to code at all so AI helped a lot. This of course, using AI and using it for a machine tool nonetheless was a bit scary but it seems to work.
My version of the project also adds a small keypad as I didn't like the idea of only having touchscreen "buttons" on a machine tool. I also thought I might as well put both the lathe speed/direction controls and all the ELS stuff in the same control panel. Mostly because I have long since gotten rid of the original lathe controls so moving them to this panel was not a big hurdle but also because I am treating this project as practice for making control panels for my CNC mill and CNC lathe sometime in the future.
Anyhow, in a fancy render, the mini lathe control panel looks like this:
The panel will be made out of one solid block of plastic but I am still waiting for that material to arrive so the first version was made out of two thinner plates with standoffs in between:
I also had to learn how to design and make mechanical keyboards as that's the approach I used for the keypad. First I made a standalone panel to prove the concept:
The keycaps are resin 3D-printed and the text is debossed in print and then filled in with nailpolish and then sanded off the overflow.
BTW, the key switches are Kailh Box Navy as they are the heaviest ones I could find easily. I think heavy and clicky makes the most sense on a machine tool.
The lathe is becoming more and more skeletonized:
The panel does look a tad big but I think it's alright. The NanoELS project generally calls for a 5 inch screen but I went with a 7 inch version - which also ended up "giving" me the space to add the keypad.
Oh, I also finally increased the travel on the X which I should have done years ago. You may be able to make out the extension on the X-handwheel and also the alu u-profile on the back of the carriage which holds and protects the magnetic scale and read head for the DRO.
Furthermore, I added a small encoder next to the keypad - I programmed this to work as a sort of feed override, so I can set fine feed here when doing general turning so I don't have to type in a pitch/feed value, I can just scroll on the knob.
I also had to make a stepper motor bracket for the Z-leadscrew:
(Disregard the badly printed orange enclosure, it's for the previous crappy ELS). The motor bracket is adjustable to get the belt tension set fairly easily and parts like these are easy to make when you have a CNC mill. BTW, the stepper is a closed loop version running on 48V.
But most importantly, it all seems to work. I can cut threads now and I have a magnetic scale on the X so I finally have what I always dreamt of: An ELS and DRO in one.
Still to add/fix: leadscrew covers coming soon, a solid tool post, too (I don't need to cut tapers on this machine so I can drop the compound slide which was always a weak point in these lathes), another scale on the Z, perhaps new bearings in the headstock, I may also change the BLDC spindle motor to a servo motor so I can run it really slow - slow enough to use as a rotisserie for the carbon tubes when epoxy coating them.
So, yesterday and today, I have been calibrating the X-scale and finally getting the headstock trammed properly, and I made some test cuts. These were the first ones, an M8x1.5 and M10x1.5 - I should have taken the thread a little bit deeper but most importantly, the machine stayed in sync and the limits and semi-automated threading worked:
And then I went on to test something closer to home: M6x1 as that's what I use when cutting down shafts:
I tried some different threading inserts, some generic/non-pitch-specific ones, some for alu and some for steel and finally settled on a pitch specific one that's designed only to cut 1mm/rev pitches like M6x1:
I think these are called full profile inserts and this version is made for alu but it works in hardened 17-4PH, too (which my shafts are made out of). I think because on a mini lathe we don't take heavy, deep cuts anyhow, so having a sharper insert (which the alu ones generally are) becomes more important than a sturdier, more heat resistant insert made for steel. Also, since the very tip of the insert (the valley of the thread) doesn't come to a sharp point, the final thread would theoretically be stronger than one cut with a partial profile insert. But for shaft ends, we are probably splitting hairs - I have yet to hear about a fish breaking the shaft at the tail end threads. For the threads on the alu barrels, it would probably be good to use full profile inserts, though as the rounded root of the thread probably withstand shock loads more than the sharper one left by a partial, non-specific insert.
As for cost, I sourced pretty much all the "expensive" parts used. The screen (a Nextion 7'') was new old stock and the seller had mislabeled it as a 5 inch version and I got it for about 20% the price of a new one. The normally expensive magnetic read heads are used, too and I got them so cheap I won't even mention the price. The closed loop stepper is used, too. I had it already for a different project but it would have been USD 20 incl. the driver if I had to source it. The only new parts I had to buy was the ESP32, the key switches and a few small bits and bobs for the electronics but that's all really affordable. Also, the NanoELS needs a custom PCB but that stuff is ridiculously cheap nowadays. I got 5 boards for two bucks incl. shipping which is just nuts.
Overall, the NanoELS H5 project is still a bit small in terms of the size of the community but there's development ongoing and the stock FW and screenset actually works well as is. Also, while the H5 version with the touchscreen specifies to use a Nextion screen I don't think it will take many more months until we see cheaper alternatives (with better screens, even) adopted by the community.
I think all in all, you get the best bang for the buck with NanoELS and I say that after having priced out all the other options before choosing this one.
So, if you want to add an ELS with a lot of capability and don't mind tinkering a bit, look into it
Anyhow, if you made it this far, thanks, haha.
The main goal was to get a real electronic leadscrew so I don't have to think twice about cutting threads and then getting the DRO to work was a real bonus, too. But also having power feed for general cuts along the Z is so nice. All these years, I have just used the carriage handwheel to feed as the manual change gears were always set to a thread pitch and I didn't wanna bother switching them out.
Sorry for radio silence. I had some real work come in and then it really started bothering me how out of whack the mini lathe had become. Also, I had taken off the manual change gears a while back to put an Electronic Leadscrew (ELS) on it as I was sick and tired of manually having to find and change out gears every time I wanted to cut a new thread - and also never really having "power feed" for roughing and finishing cuts.
Anyhow, I cheaped out and the ELS I got wouldn't stay in sync. But by then it was too late to go back to the manual gears so I upgraded to a better ELS project called NanoELS H5.
It runs on an ESP32 so the HW is pretty powerful, but I personally felt the user interface could be improved and also NanoELS has become more of a CNC'ish project with ballscrews and X-motors and I didn't want that. I wanted an ELS with a normal leadscrew and no X-motor. I have a CNC lathe I need to refurbish and I want the mini lathe to stay manual but with a proper ELS and ideally DRO, too.
So, I had to design a GUI and then I had to change the FW code quite a bit. In some ways, I had to dumb it down - as the NanoELS is generally more CNC than ELS by now - but in other ways, I added some features or small improvements that weren't in the code, yet - but I don't actually know how to code at all so AI helped a lot. This of course, using AI and using it for a machine tool nonetheless was a bit scary but it seems to work.
My version of the project also adds a small keypad as I didn't like the idea of only having touchscreen "buttons" on a machine tool. I also thought I might as well put both the lathe speed/direction controls and all the ELS stuff in the same control panel. Mostly because I have long since gotten rid of the original lathe controls so moving them to this panel was not a big hurdle but also because I am treating this project as practice for making control panels for my CNC mill and CNC lathe sometime in the future.
Anyhow, in a fancy render, the mini lathe control panel looks like this:
The panel will be made out of one solid block of plastic but I am still waiting for that material to arrive so the first version was made out of two thinner plates with standoffs in between:
I also had to learn how to design and make mechanical keyboards as that's the approach I used for the keypad. First I made a standalone panel to prove the concept:
The keycaps are resin 3D-printed and the text is debossed in print and then filled in with nailpolish and then sanded off the overflow.
BTW, the key switches are Kailh Box Navy as they are the heaviest ones I could find easily. I think heavy and clicky makes the most sense on a machine tool.
The lathe is becoming more and more skeletonized:
The panel does look a tad big but I think it's alright. The NanoELS project generally calls for a 5 inch screen but I went with a 7 inch version - which also ended up "giving" me the space to add the keypad.
Oh, I also finally increased the travel on the X which I should have done years ago. You may be able to make out the extension on the X-handwheel and also the alu u-profile on the back of the carriage which holds and protects the magnetic scale and read head for the DRO.
Furthermore, I added a small encoder next to the keypad - I programmed this to work as a sort of feed override, so I can set fine feed here when doing general turning so I don't have to type in a pitch/feed value, I can just scroll on the knob.
I also had to make a stepper motor bracket for the Z-leadscrew:
(Disregard the badly printed orange enclosure, it's for the previous crappy ELS). The motor bracket is adjustable to get the belt tension set fairly easily and parts like these are easy to make when you have a CNC mill. BTW, the stepper is a closed loop version running on 48V.
But most importantly, it all seems to work. I can cut threads now and I have a magnetic scale on the X so I finally have what I always dreamt of: An ELS and DRO in one.
Still to add/fix: leadscrew covers coming soon, a solid tool post, too (I don't need to cut tapers on this machine so I can drop the compound slide which was always a weak point in these lathes), another scale on the Z, perhaps new bearings in the headstock, I may also change the BLDC spindle motor to a servo motor so I can run it really slow - slow enough to use as a rotisserie for the carbon tubes when epoxy coating them.
So, yesterday and today, I have been calibrating the X-scale and finally getting the headstock trammed properly, and I made some test cuts. These were the first ones, an M8x1.5 and M10x1.5 - I should have taken the thread a little bit deeper but most importantly, the machine stayed in sync and the limits and semi-automated threading worked:
And then I went on to test something closer to home: M6x1 as that's what I use when cutting down shafts:
I tried some different threading inserts, some generic/non-pitch-specific ones, some for alu and some for steel and finally settled on a pitch specific one that's designed only to cut 1mm/rev pitches like M6x1:
I think these are called full profile inserts and this version is made for alu but it works in hardened 17-4PH, too (which my shafts are made out of). I think because on a mini lathe we don't take heavy, deep cuts anyhow, so having a sharper insert (which the alu ones generally are) becomes more important than a sturdier, more heat resistant insert made for steel. Also, since the very tip of the insert (the valley of the thread) doesn't come to a sharp point, the final thread would theoretically be stronger than one cut with a partial profile insert. But for shaft ends, we are probably splitting hairs - I have yet to hear about a fish breaking the shaft at the tail end threads
. For the threads on the alu barrels, it would probably be good to use full profile inserts, though as the rounded root of the thread probably withstand shock loads more than the sharper one left by a partial, non-specific insert.As for cost, I sourced pretty much all the "expensive" parts used. The screen (a Nextion 7'') was new old stock and the seller had mislabeled it as a 5 inch version and I got it for about 20% the price of a new one. The normally expensive magnetic read heads are used, too and I got them so cheap I won't even mention the price. The closed loop stepper is used, too. I had it already for a different project but it would have been USD 20 incl. the driver if I had to source it. The only new parts I had to buy was the ESP32, the key switches and a few small bits and bobs for the electronics but that's all really affordable. Also, the NanoELS needs a custom PCB but that stuff is ridiculously cheap nowadays. I got 5 boards for two bucks incl. shipping which is just nuts.
Overall, the NanoELS H5 project is still a bit small in terms of the size of the community but there's development ongoing and the stock FW and screenset actually works well as is. Also, while the H5 version with the touchscreen specifies to use a Nextion screen I don't think it will take many more months until we see cheaper alternatives (with better screens, even) adopted by the community.
I think all in all, you get the best bang for the buck with NanoELS and I say that after having priced out all the other options before choosing this one.
So, if you want to add an ELS with a lot of capability and don't mind tinkering a bit, look into it
Anyhow, if you made it this far, thanks, haha.
The main goal was to get a real electronic leadscrew so I don't have to think twice about cutting threads and then getting the DRO to work was a real bonus, too. But also having power feed for general cuts along the Z is so nice. All these years, I have just used the carriage handwheel to feed as the manual change gears were always set to a thread pitch and I didn't wanna bother switching them out.
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Using a 3D-Printed Compression Mold to Lightweight a Salvimar Reel - Mistakes Were Made... Part 1
I have said plenty of times over the years how I really don't like my guns to be too negative in the water. So, often a lot of my modifying focus is on getting rid of weight. And while this shorter Mirage style gun is getting very close to neutral there are a few more things I can do - for example, I can slim down the reel a bit.
I am using this Salvimar reel that came with the gun. No idea what the model name is:
By the way, notice how I bent the stainless bracket to better follow the trigger guard and I still had to use a little standoff to make it work - we will get back to that later.
The Salvi reel weighs in at around 197g with line on it:
That's honestly not too bad, but the steel bracket is a tad heavy so I want to swap it out for one made it in carbon fiber. Overall, I don't think I can save more than 25-30g on this project but that's OK. I am also doing it as I want to try to use a resin printed compression mold as well as experiment with CNC machining carbon fiber.
Basically, a compression mold is exactly that - it's a mold where the mold itself does the compression on the laminate vs. having vacuum or pressure doing it.
Oh, while we are at it, I found another engineering oversight - The mounting holes on this reel aren't centered. They are 2mm off center which means the whole reel is 2mm off to the side. It's almost like the engineer who drew this up forgot to account for the thickness of the steel bracket...
Anyhow, back to my mod. The Mares handle has been chopped up and changed a lot by now. E.g. the original trigger guard is long gone and since I am making the CF reel bracket from scratch I might as well make it fit the guard better. This is a one-off, it's only going to be used on this handle otherwise I wouldn't bother, of course.
But the shape will end up like this:
I used an old trick to help get the curve matched nicely to the trigger guard which is to import an image into Fusion and sketch on top of it:
The ruler is included in the image because it makes it a whole lot easier to calibrate the size of the image. Also, most cameras (and cheap) scanners distort the image so it's not a bad idea to calibrate both in X and in Y after importing the image.
But if you look at the front of the trigger guard, you can see the carbon fiber bracket following the curvature fairly close.
After having completed the CAD for the bracket, next I needed to make a mold.
I have said plenty of times over the years how I really don't like my guns to be too negative in the water. So, often a lot of my modifying focus is on getting rid of weight. And while this shorter Mirage style gun is getting very close to neutral there are a few more things I can do - for example, I can slim down the reel a bit.
I am using this Salvimar reel that came with the gun. No idea what the model name is:
By the way, notice how I bent the stainless bracket to better follow the trigger guard and I still had to use a little standoff to make it work - we will get back to that later.
The Salvi reel weighs in at around 197g with line on it:
That's honestly not too bad, but the steel bracket is a tad heavy so I want to swap it out for one made it in carbon fiber. Overall, I don't think I can save more than 25-30g on this project but that's OK. I am also doing it as I want to try to use a resin printed compression mold as well as experiment with CNC machining carbon fiber.
Basically, a compression mold is exactly that - it's a mold where the mold itself does the compression on the laminate vs. having vacuum or pressure doing it.
Oh, while we are at it, I found another engineering oversight - The mounting holes on this reel aren't centered. They are 2mm off center which means the whole reel is 2mm off to the side. It's almost like the engineer who drew this up forgot to account for the thickness of the steel bracket...
Anyhow, back to my mod. The Mares handle has been chopped up and changed a lot by now. E.g. the original trigger guard is long gone and since I am making the CF reel bracket from scratch I might as well make it fit the guard better. This is a one-off, it's only going to be used on this handle otherwise I wouldn't bother, of course.
But the shape will end up like this:
I used an old trick to help get the curve matched nicely to the trigger guard which is to import an image into Fusion and sketch on top of it:
The ruler is included in the image because it makes it a whole lot easier to calibrate the size of the image. Also, most cameras (and cheap) scanners distort the image so it's not a bad idea to calibrate both in X and in Y after importing the image.
But if you look at the front of the trigger guard, you can see the carbon fiber bracket following the curvature fairly close.
After having completed the CAD for the bracket, next I needed to make a mold.
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Using a 3D-Printed Compression Mold to Lightweight a Salvimar Reel - Mistakes Were Made... Part 2
Actually, I first modeled the mold as just as an open one piece mold as my idea was to vacuum bag the thing. Well, I guess in reality it could also just be a plug and not a mold, but potato/potato...;-)
I got as far as printing it and then realized I don't really have proper breather ply or vacuum tape here (have ordered some now) and the part is so small it's actually not that easy to bag. So, I thought it could be a good excuse to finally try a 3D-printed compression mold.
Here's a pic of that first mold/plug.
It was printed hollow and then filled with that DIY putty I often use made up by chopped CF and epoxy. And then I threaded it afterwards as the idea was to use some screws to secure the CF part during subsequent machining. But as said, I ditched this first plug.
So, the next one was a two-piece compression mold:
(It's actually pretty easy to make molds/plugs in Fusion by using the Combine tool in combination with Offset Faces).
The mold was then resin 3D-printed and while resin has very high resolution that doesn't always mean you get super accurate parts as on big parts with flat faces like this one, you often end up with warping anf shrinkage.
Anyhow, I pressed on and this is the mold after printing and UV-curing :
It was hollow but with som chunky walls and internal bracing. But I missed a beat. I should have made the outer shell (the L-shaped part) have flanges that would slide over the inner mold to aid in aligning the two.
As mentioned, resin printing can print some tiny features so I added a tiny 0.15x0.15mm lip all around the periphery of the CF bracket:
The idea was that if I had to trim the CF part to size manually with a grinder, this lip would leave an imprint on the part that I could follow and I would end up nicely on size.
BTW, that can in the background with the green label is a composites release agent which will become important soon.
Previously, I had contemplated making the mold out of either CNC-machined aluminium or polypropylene plastic as I have plenty of it. So, I did a test to see how well the CF would release from both mold materials after having used the "green" release. No issues, the PP released even without the release agent added and the alu released fine with it added:
But because of too many blackouts as a binge-drinking teenager, getting old now or just cuz I am pretty stupid sometimes, I somehow forgot to do a release test on the 3D-resin material.
I went on to do the layup. 10 layers of 220g CF twill. Wetted out between two layers of plastic before laying up in the mold:
This is sometimes referred to as "wet-preg" but you can think of it as the poor man's version of prepreg. It helps with handling and keeping things a bit cleaner overall and I do it pretty much everytime I need to layup CF nowadays.
And we finally get to the compression molding - here's the mold held in a vise with two extra clamps on it:
But this pic also shows why it would have been nice to have the outer shell have side walls that would hug the inner mold so I didn't have to clamp from all three sides but only two.
After curing, normally I would be able to just pop open the mold but nah, because of not testing the release on this material, I was in for a nightmare:
And this is the big mistake and a rookie one at that. Always, always test your release method. I know this and yet, I messed up. I have no idea why it didn't work. Maybe some chemical mismatch between the acrylic-based resin and the release agent...
The only very, very slight upside to this was that I didn't have to worry about how to hold the CF part for machining as it was stuck to the inner mold as badly as it was to the outer. So, once I had gotten most of the outer shell off, I could chuck the rest in the CNC and machine the outline, mounting holes and the bigger hole in the side for the spindle holding the drum:
It took machining on three sides to get to all the features. But the mold had warped slightly so there was a bit of an offset between the top and side after when I flipped the part to cut the second operation but it wasn't too bad.
Actually, I first modeled the mold as just as an open one piece mold as my idea was to vacuum bag the thing. Well, I guess in reality it could also just be a plug and not a mold, but potato/potato...;-)
I got as far as printing it and then realized I don't really have proper breather ply or vacuum tape here (have ordered some now) and the part is so small it's actually not that easy to bag. So, I thought it could be a good excuse to finally try a 3D-printed compression mold.
Here's a pic of that first mold/plug.
It was printed hollow and then filled with that DIY putty I often use made up by chopped CF and epoxy. And then I threaded it afterwards as the idea was to use some screws to secure the CF part during subsequent machining. But as said, I ditched this first plug.
So, the next one was a two-piece compression mold:
(It's actually pretty easy to make molds/plugs in Fusion by using the Combine tool in combination with Offset Faces).
The mold was then resin 3D-printed and while resin has very high resolution that doesn't always mean you get super accurate parts as on big parts with flat faces like this one, you often end up with warping anf shrinkage.
Anyhow, I pressed on and this is the mold after printing and UV-curing :
It was hollow but with som chunky walls and internal bracing. But I missed a beat. I should have made the outer shell (the L-shaped part) have flanges that would slide over the inner mold to aid in aligning the two.
As mentioned, resin printing can print some tiny features so I added a tiny 0.15x0.15mm lip all around the periphery of the CF bracket:
The idea was that if I had to trim the CF part to size manually with a grinder, this lip would leave an imprint on the part that I could follow and I would end up nicely on size.
BTW, that can in the background with the green label is a composites release agent which will become important soon.
Previously, I had contemplated making the mold out of either CNC-machined aluminium or polypropylene plastic as I have plenty of it. So, I did a test to see how well the CF would release from both mold materials after having used the "green" release. No issues, the PP released even without the release agent added and the alu released fine with it added:
I went on to do the layup. 10 layers of 220g CF twill. Wetted out between two layers of plastic before laying up in the mold:
And we finally get to the compression molding - here's the mold held in a vise with two extra clamps on it:
But this pic also shows why it would have been nice to have the outer shell have side walls that would hug the inner mold so I didn't have to clamp from all three sides but only two.
After curing, normally I would be able to just pop open the mold but nah, because of not testing the release on this material, I was in for a nightmare:
And this is the big mistake and a rookie one at that. Always, always test your release method. I know this and yet, I messed up. I have no idea why it didn't work. Maybe some chemical mismatch between the acrylic-based resin and the release agent...
The only very, very slight upside to this was that I didn't have to worry about how to hold the CF part for machining as it was stuck to the inner mold as badly as it was to the outer. So, once I had gotten most of the outer shell off, I could chuck the rest in the CNC and machine the outline, mounting holes and the bigger hole in the side for the spindle holding the drum:
It took machining on three sides to get to all the features. But the mold had warped slightly so there was a bit of an offset between the top and side after when I flipped the part to cut the second operation but it wasn't too bad.
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Using a 3D-Printed Compression Mold to Lightweight a Salvimar Reel - Mistakes Were Made... Part 3
And then it was onto the dreaded task of trying to get the CF bracket to release from the inner mold, too. With the help of a chisel, hammer and finally grinder I got it to a pretty decent state:
And then I wetsanded the rest. The inside still has some white resin left embedded but can't be bothered to sand more as I was already sanding through the first CF layer.
I could also just have cut my losses and started over on a new mold and part but at this point, I wanted to see if this could be salvaged and I honestly don't care if this part is perfect of not, it just has to be functional.
I mentioned that the drum rides on a spindle so I also had to make that. The original is pretty nicely made out of solid Delrin. This "weigh-in" pic shows it fairly well:
I decided to make that in CF, too. I had some leftover 16mm CF tube from my polespear project but I still had to make that round flange and I decided to do some recycling as I have a broken CF fin blade I could put to good use:
So, I cut some strips out of it with my nice little grinder and a diamond cut-off wheel - trick is to do this kinda work over the vacuum hose as well as wearing a mask, of course:
Then I sanded all the pieces, glued them up in a stack with epoxy and once cured, I used the superglue + tape workholding method to add them to an alu blank so I could hold it in the vise for machining:
I use a 4mm carbide burr to machine CF. It works better than endmills:
Perhaps not as precise, but plenty good for this kind of work:
I then glued the little piece of tube to the round flange to make the spindle assembly and then later to the CF bracket itself:
And as of today, this is the progress made. Next up, I need to machine a slot in the end of the spindle and then make a Delrin bushing as the CF tube is thinner than the original spindle. And I may make a new brake knob, too. Not sure, yet. But It's almost done.
And then it was onto the dreaded task of trying to get the CF bracket to release from the inner mold, too. With the help of a chisel, hammer and finally grinder I got it to a pretty decent state:
And then I wetsanded the rest. The inside still has some white resin left embedded but can't be bothered to sand more as I was already sanding through the first CF layer.
I could also just have cut my losses and started over on a new mold and part but at this point, I wanted to see if this could be salvaged and I honestly don't care if this part is perfect of not, it just has to be functional.
I mentioned that the drum rides on a spindle so I also had to make that. The original is pretty nicely made out of solid Delrin. This "weigh-in" pic shows it fairly well:
I decided to make that in CF, too. I had some leftover 16mm CF tube from my polespear project but I still had to make that round flange and I decided to do some recycling as I have a broken CF fin blade I could put to good use:
So, I cut some strips out of it with my nice little grinder and a diamond cut-off wheel - trick is to do this kinda work over the vacuum hose as well as wearing a mask, of course:
Then I sanded all the pieces, glued them up in a stack with epoxy and once cured, I used the superglue + tape workholding method to add them to an alu blank so I could hold it in the vise for machining:
I use a 4mm carbide burr to machine CF. It works better than endmills:
Perhaps not as precise, but plenty good for this kind of work:
I then glued the little piece of tube to the round flange to make the spindle assembly and then later to the CF bracket itself:
And as of today, this is the progress made. Next up, I need to machine a slot in the end of the spindle and then make a Delrin bushing as the CF tube is thinner than the original spindle. And I may make a new brake knob, too. Not sure, yet. But It's almost done.
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Using a 3D-Printed Compression Mold to Lightweight a Salvimar Reel - Part 4
We're done, this little project is finished. Obviously not perfect but good enough
Yesterday, we left off with the spindle needing a slot machined which was easy on the CNC:
I also decided not to bother with making a new brake knob as it only took turning down the inner boss to a smaller diameter to make the old one work:
That boss now fits into the smaller bore of the round flange. Also, looking at the knob in the close up pic and that scalloped surface made me think that part is not Delrin but probably machined out of glassfiber filled nylon. Not sure why, possibly because of the threads in the part but the end cap that also has thread and is in Delrin (that one does have more thread engagement though.
Finally, I had to make a little sleeve to make up for the thinner CF tube. This was easy on the lathe with the new DRO and electronic leadscrew. Yes, it looks a bit messy but it's all coming together nicely and is really nice to use.
Here's that simple sleeve:
You can tell I still left some of the white resin on the inside - as mentioned I got tired of sanding and since I was already sanding into the CF itself, I thought it prudent to stop.
So, in the end the only thing I changed out was the spindle and the bracket and the weight savings ended up at 33g in total:
Or if I wanted to spin it, I could say that on the parts that I did work on, I shaved off ~53% of the weight, haha.
Oh, totally forgot! Titanium...! The new bolt on the right is a titanium one and saves almost 6g, haha. It was less than two bucks so thought I would splash
And here's the final total weight, it was ~197g before the mods:
And here it is mounted on the handle:
So, 33g saved. Was it worth it? For most people, probably not. But I will take on projects if I feel I can learn from them. And since I wanted some more experience with machining CF as well as wanting to use resin-printed molds, it was worth it to me.
Also, I want to make my own reel from scratch. Maybe sometime next year, when I have the CNC lathe up and running as then I will have the machining capabilities to get it done.
Honestly, most reels are super simple. And most are heavier than I think they should be - or too flimsy - and the ones with brakes (which I prefer) have way too coarse brake settings. So, I think it would be cool to take a stab at making my own and improving on those points. Also, I want to finally get into resin infusion for another bigger project so starting on reel brackets/frames doesn't seem like a bad idea.
Anyhow, what did I learn on this project:
- 3D-printed molds are fine, others have proved that, but not sure resin molds are the best. They warp a fair bit and need quite a lot of reinforcement if you want to clamp down on them with proper force. I think FDM printing them and just spending some time sanding and filling would likely end up better
- I also have some nice recipes for machining CF on my CNC now which will come in handy for other little projects down the line
I think there's only one more thing I can do in the weight-savings department for this gun and that is to shorten the shaft. I normally do that as one of the first things on new guns, but since I haven't been able to cut threads on the lathe for a long while I haven't done it, yet. Well, I could have used a die, but it's just nicer to single point cut them and now with the new ELS, I can again.
We're done, this little project is finished. Obviously not perfect but good enough
Yesterday, we left off with the spindle needing a slot machined which was easy on the CNC:
I also decided not to bother with making a new brake knob as it only took turning down the inner boss to a smaller diameter to make the old one work:
That boss now fits into the smaller bore of the round flange. Also, looking at the knob in the close up pic and that scalloped surface made me think that part is not Delrin but probably machined out of glassfiber filled nylon. Not sure why, possibly because of the threads in the part but the end cap that also has thread and is in Delrin (that one does have more thread engagement though.
Finally, I had to make a little sleeve to make up for the thinner CF tube. This was easy on the lathe with the new DRO and electronic leadscrew. Yes, it looks a bit messy but it's all coming together nicely and is really nice to use.
Here's that simple sleeve:
You can tell I still left some of the white resin on the inside - as mentioned I got tired of sanding and since I was already sanding into the CF itself, I thought it prudent to stop.
So, in the end the only thing I changed out was the spindle and the bracket and the weight savings ended up at 33g in total:
Or if I wanted to spin it, I could say that on the parts that I did work on, I shaved off ~53% of the weight, haha.
Oh, totally forgot! Titanium...! The new bolt on the right is a titanium one and saves almost 6g, haha. It was less than two bucks so thought I would splash
And here's the final total weight, it was ~197g before the mods:
And here it is mounted on the handle:
So, 33g saved. Was it worth it? For most people, probably not. But I will take on projects if I feel I can learn from them. And since I wanted some more experience with machining CF as well as wanting to use resin-printed molds, it was worth it to me.
Also, I want to make my own reel from scratch. Maybe sometime next year, when I have the CNC lathe up and running as then I will have the machining capabilities to get it done.
Honestly, most reels are super simple. And most are heavier than I think they should be - or too flimsy - and the ones with brakes (which I prefer) have way too coarse brake settings. So, I think it would be cool to take a stab at making my own and improving on those points. Also, I want to finally get into resin infusion for another bigger project so starting on reel brackets/frames doesn't seem like a bad idea
.Anyhow, what did I learn on this project:
- 3D-printed molds are fine, others have proved that, but not sure resin molds are the best. They warp a fair bit and need quite a lot of reinforcement if you want to clamp down on them with proper force. I think FDM printing them and just spending some time sanding and filling would likely end up better
- I also have some nice recipes for machining CF on my CNC now which will come in handy for other little projects down the line
I think there's only one more thing I can do in the weight-savings department for this gun and that is to shorten the shaft. I normally do that as one of the first things on new guns, but since I haven't been able to cut threads on the lathe for a long while I haven't done it, yet. Well, I could have used a die, but it's just nicer to single point cut them and now with the new ELS, I can again.
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Shorter shaft means less mass and less m * v = momentum ... ?
I would think that's true... And it's the one reason I am stil a little bit hesitant about cutting it down.
"Historically", I have always cut my shafts as short as possible as having a neutrally buoyant gun was important to me. And I never got into the energy measurements and calculations that you have done so well in the past.
I am thinking that if the gun is neutral now, I can keep the shaft as is since with the Mirage system I should have plenty of energy on tap to fully power up the shaft. But if it's nose heavy, I will have to cut it down.
At some point next year, when I will finally start working on my own handle and possibly a 14mm piston and possibly a custom reservoir, I will pick your brain more about energy, mass, speed, etc. For now, for this reef gun, I think handling is more important. In all likelihood, it will have plenty of power - especially since I also dropped the Mirage pumping barrel down to 9mm from the traditional 10mm, so loading it has become even easier.
On that same note, the hunting discipline matters, too. For a reef gun where you'd do more aspetto, I care a lot more about handling and buoyancy than on a pure bluewater gun where you sometimes literally hover in the water column with both hands on your gun waiting for a big fish to approach. I find that the time I am actually holding the gun out horizontally targeting a fish on each diver is way shorter in BW hunting than on the reef.
It could mean lower momentum but also higher initial momentum due to velocity increasing as the shaft becomes lighter. If it still has good mass the shot could improve with a larger effective range due to increased speed, which would also give a similar (or even higher) momentum but at a shorter distance (it drops more farther away while the heavier shaft would have a bit higher momentum, but would travel more slowly).
Depends on the kinetic energy too.
Depends on the kinetic energy too.
Thoughts On Practical Speed and Energy Measurements
Admittedly, the math and physics of all this was never my strong side but yes, that's the conundrum as I always understood it: A lighter shaft with a faster shot that will taper off in energy vs. a heavier, slower shaft which may carry more energy further out.
I guess without proper data, it's one of those points that can be argued either way and has been for decades.
This is just speculation but given that airgun shafts are rather short and thus don't have much mass combined with the fact that we often have quite a lot of energy stored, perhaps the rule of thumb should be to keep the shaft as long/big as possible. Especially on a Mirage-style gun with even more energy potential.
From time to time, I do think about underwater chronographs and ways to measure the energy of the impact. But I have way too many other projects before I can get to that point. I think the best I can do is to take a known good, tuned bandgun and put my airgun up against it. We wouldn't get specific numbers but we would see comparisons.
If I was to make a chronograph some day - and I may have picked this idea up from some of Tomi's older work - a way to do it would be to use contact microphones (you could probably use simple piezo resistors) and mount one on the gun handle to sense the trigger moment and one on the target to sense the impact and then record the two signals into either a laptop or audio recorder on the pool side. Then looking for the two audio peaks from the impacts in editing software would give us the time between them and thus, the average speed could easily be calculated if we were good at keeping to a known, precise distance. You would possibly need to amplify the signal but that can probably be done really cheap with some off-the shelf analog amplifier modules.
But for average speed, just counting video frames off of a modern actioncam in slow motion would be precise enough, too.
But would this combined with knowing the mass of the shaft could give us the energy of the impact? Maybe not as we don't actually have the speed at the point of impact but only an average speed?
I think gun chronographs which do read the speed of the bullet at one point only - as opposed to an average speed - work with optical sensors but whether they can be made to work underwater, I don't know. If they could, you could have two - one right at the muzzle and one right at the target. I guess that would give us the best data.
Practical energy measurements would be harder. I have thought about mounting load cells on the target - maybe on 3-4 points of a plate and then averaging the readings. But I don't know if load cells and their "drivers" can sample fast enough to actually measure the peak of the impact.
Once you start going down this road, you quickly realize why Majd, back when he used to relentlessly test settled on "just" comparative penetration testing between various guns but always on the same target material - in combination, of course, with accuracy tests.
It's been years since I last went into this rabbithole and at the time, noone had made an UW chronograph work to my knowledge but maybe it's been done by now?
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