Supporting > Additive Machining
A fix for the shakes.
ddmckee54:
As I said in my "Got the shakes" thread in Chatterbox I've got a benign essential tremor. I've had it for years and it has been getting worse, despite the medications. My neurologist says we've gone about as far as medication is going to take us so this might be about as good as it gets. I have had to find ways to deal with it. I'm an electrical engineer and communicating with electrical contractors is a big part of my job. Where I used to hand sketch some thing out, it now gets done in AutoCAD. Hand written notes and instructions are now done in Word or by e-mail, which also has the added advantage of giving me a paper-trail. A couple of weeks ago I was making some wiring changes to my 3D printer that involved a minimal amount of soldering - couldn't do it anymore, my hands shook too much.
For some reason not being able to do that simple activity really pissed me off and I decided that I wasn't gonna take it no more. I've got a 3D printer, I'm gonna build me some type of a jig/contraption that will allow me to successfully make a solder joint. I want to be able to make that joint whether it's on a PC board or just splicing a wire, so this thing is going to require a fair range of movement. I also want to be able to extend and retract the soldering iron to bring it into contact with what ever I'm trying to solder. One last requirement, this thing has to be fairly compact and easy to store. I'm also going to make this so that the parts are either 3D printed, bar stock and/or threaded rod that is just sawn to length, or simple plywood rectangles.
My first thought was some type of a movable X-Y table with the soldering iron on one side of the table and the solder roll on the other side of the table with everything meeting somewhere in the middle. Then I realized that every time I needed to re-position the soldering iron I would also have to re-position the solder, etc., etc.... Not acceptable, too clumsy and time consuming. My current thought is to have the solder roll and soldering iron slaved together. Last weekend while I was waiting for the printer to get done with an 8 hour-ish print I started playing around with a 3D model of what I want, see the attached 3D PDF. The model is rather crude because I'm still learning this 3D stuff. I'm an electrical engineer, I don't NEED to know how to do 3D cad. 2D cad works just fine for electrical schematics - thank you very much.
The silver/gray thing is the solder feed tube, and the brown cylinder is an 8oz. roll of solder. I haven't got the solder feed mechanism drawn yet, but it'll fit between the 2 red soldering iron clamps and it'll be in line with the solder feed tube. I'm thinking that the feed gear for a 3D printer Bowden style extruder drive would be a Jim-Dandy starting point for the solder feed drive. I also haven't got the soldering iron extend/retract mechanism thought through entirely. Right now it is shown as the red bar that holds the 2 soldering iron clamps apart. It could be as involved as a rack and pinion or a feed screw of some type, or it could be just a friction clamp that keeps the iron where I put it.
The X-Y table at this point in time is just a lot of hand waving and head scratching. I thought I'd start at the soldering iron and work my way out from there.
Don
b.lindsey:
Don, I'm just seeing a blank white sheet in the .PDF. Is it just me or are others seeing the same.
Bill
PStechPaul:
Also a blank for me. Acrobat Reader blocked 3-D content but still no joy after enabling it.
You might want to look into the "Gyro-Glove":
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/545456/hope-in-a-glove-for-parkinsons-patients/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFzHYU3aVAY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rZpqryeAvs
You might be able to adapt a camera stabilizer for your purposes:
https://www.amazon.com/camera-gyro-stabilizer/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Acamera%20gyro%20stabilizer
ddmckee54:
Bill/All:
When I first open the PDF from the thread I see a blank white sheet with a grey box in the upper left-hand corner. The grey box has a red question mark in it. Is that what you're seeing?
If so then there should be a yellow bar across the top of the screen with an "Options" button/tab towards the right-hand side. It was about even with the edge of the white area on my PC. This will give you a pull down menu with the options of "Always trust this document" or "Trust this document once". Select one of them, because if you don't tell your PC security to "trust" the document it won't allow you to enable the content.
After you've "trusted" the document then you can click on the grey box and enable the content. Not sure if you need to left click or right click, can't get into that screen while I'm typing this.
After you've trusted the document and enabled the content you SHOULD see the model on the screen. That's what worked for me anyway when I opened the PDF from the thread. If that doesn't help then we need to go further into the realm of IT and cyber-security than I care to delve, or I am qualified to for that matter.
Don
b.lindsey:
Thanks Don. It doesn't work for me within the thread, but if I download and save the .pdf file and then open it from my desktop I get exactly what you describe. Could be a settings problem on my end, but I can see the 3D drawing now :)
Bill
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