Long time no run (outside, that is). Snow is a soft and forgiving, if not very fast, surface to run on. Recommended.
Made another PIKANTO on Saturday, this time with a clear gelcoat. Will be interesting to see it out of the mould on Tuesday or Wednesday, stay tuned.
Number of wires from servo-motor to controller on my lathe build: 19.
1: Motor power U
2: Motor power V
3: Motor power W
4: Hall sensor +5V
5: Hall sensor U
6: Hall sensor V
7: Hall sensor W
8: Hall sensor GND
9: Encoder +5V
10: Encoder A
11: Encoder B
12: Encoder Z
13: Encoder GND
14: +Limit switch Common
15: +Limit switch N.O.
16: +Limit switch N.C.
17: -Limit/Home switch Common
18: -Limit/Home switch N.O.
19: -Limit/Home switch N.C.
The motor currents go through the AMP-connecor, everything else through the 25-pin D-connector.
I’m glad the lathe only has two servos (and a spindle), I would go mad with a 5-axis machine…
It is not very often you see this kind of snow-plower-winter-tram!
7k walk from Kumpula to downtown. Google earth inserts a golf-playing green man at every kilometer.
We’ve done the CAD design, CAM-toolpaths, and CNC-machining for a set of RG65 model yacht (looks roughly like this) fin and rudder moulds. They will be shipped to the customer on Monday.
From time to time I get enquiries about making moulds like this, for fins, rudders, bulbs, etc., from people around the world. Usually by people who’ve gone to a professional mould-shop or cnc-workshop with their drawings, and suffered a bit of sticker-shock when they’ve seen the quote. For this set of moulds we asked 500 euros, which is not a lot I claim. Production and delivery in one week or less after the final CAD-drawings were available.
If you’re interested in CNC-cut moulds in aluminium or steel, please send your ideas, preferably a CAD drawing, and I’ll send you a rough quote. Keep in mind that our machine has a working XY envelope of ca 500×200 mm, so no single parts can be bigger than this. There are lots of examples of what we do in this blog, you might like: bumper mould (2010 Jan), Rudder mould (2009 Dec), IOM MDF plug (2009 Feb), Microscope part (2009 Sep), IOM Fin moulds (2008 Jun), Telescope rings (2008 May).
Wide-field shot of the area around Leo. The bright dot low and right of center is Mars, and I think next to mars is the open cluster M44 (a.k.a. “the beehive cluster” or “Praesepe“). These pictures really need to be taken on nights without the moon. There’s a huge gradient from dark to bright towards the direction of the moon.
I tried to add some lines and text for constellations, but it’s fairly difficult because so many stars are showing in the picture:
3 x 20 min = 60 min exposure of Ursa Major through a 17-40/4L lens at ca 17mm and stopped down to F5.6. There is something funny with the polar-alignment or the guiding which makes the stars in the lower left corner not look good.
A documentary, “Dreamland“, about Iceland was on TV this week. It’s a strange mix of wonderful Icelandic landscapes combined with Capitalism with a capital “C”.
Check it out on YLE Areena now: (it’s available 30 days from now, probably to Finnish IPs only)
http://areena.yle.fi/video/712205
Canon 500D camera with EF-200/2.8L lens on EQ6 equatorial mount guided by a QHY5 camera and PHDGuiding. Stacked 5 frames in Deep Sky Stacker, total exposure ca 5 minutes. Shot on Sat-Sun night 23-24 Jan 2010 in cool -18 C but calm weather. Would have wanted longer exposures and more frames, but the guiding wasn’t working very well, and Orion is pretty low, hiding behind trees from my site. The dark thing on the right is a tree 
Same image but cropped:
A nice improvement over my 2008 December attempt on M42.