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Tuesday, March 14, 2017

It's an Enclosure -

Except for that whole "closure" part.  The doors barely close.  On the other hand, the other 95% of it is pretty good and very likely good enough to be done.


As I was saying last week, the enclosure isn't on the DVD I bought, but is in the open on Hossmachine's YouTube channel and discussed to some degree on the CNCZone forum.  In his final video, Hoss says he used some magnetic latches that grab the steel L brackets (seen pretty much whereever the horizontal and vertical elements of the frames come together).  The magnets are held in some plastic housings that Hoss 3D printed and screwed to the top rail in the front.  Well, I don't have the magnets and I don't have the 3D printer.  To compound things, you can see the enormous chrome plated handles Hoss had picked out.  How he gets the enclosure to close is to put both handles in his right hand and squeeze them together.  That pulls the two door panels closed and the magnets grab them.  In my version, the handles bang into each other and just barely allow the door frames to touch.  It will close, but it doesn't stay closed without those magnets.

Compared to a pin or some hardware to lock the doors in place, the magnets are a convenient solution, but I obviously need something to latch it closed.

For now, I'm going to try to find a few parts.  I'll say the enclosure is over 90% done.  Granted the last few percent are very important, but there's still more tweaking, optimizing and maybe even upgrading to do on everything.


6 comments:

  1. Bifold? Drop a U shaped piece of metal over the second hinge point-if the door can't swing in, it can't open. Or use a hook and eye at the same point on the outside, to keep it from swinging in. Not elegant, but it should work fine.

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    1. Nice idea. Simple to do. I'd like to not have to pull a pin or something, but with the Big Red Switch, I shouldn't have to get in there in a hurry.

      A quick check of eBay shows magnetic latches for kitchen cabinets for a buck a piece, so it shouldn't be a big deal.

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  2. I think it's time for me to buy some stock in Windex, since someone is gonna need large quantities of same to keep transparent elements transparent...
    }:-]

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    1. The 55 gallon drum gets delivered Thursday. ;-)

      Just kidding. I'm not sure what's going to happen. The guys on one of the forums I visit are talking about using mist cooling instead of flood. Flooding sprays so much fluid it's hard to see what's going on. These things are supposed to be Da Bomb.

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  3. Well, good luck! You do know that when a project is 95% finished, there's still half the work left to do, right? Engineering Rule #732.

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    1. Absolutely! It has always been the case that jobs got to 90 or 95% finished quickly and the last few percent took forever. It gave rise to saying that jobs were done and then eventually made it to "Done done".

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