Mixtacy

Friday, August 17, 2018

Apple esque CNC enclosure.

I mocked up what the display would of looked like when it was working.

So I had this Apple Cinema 30" that I had knocked over eventually due to my clumsiness. But growing up poor my whole life I couldn't get my self to throw such an expensive piece of high quality gear in the trash.
Let's back up a couple years so I can tell you a little story about my DIY CNC machine enclosure project to get you up to speed on why this post is being made.

When I was a younger me.. I was playing with different ideas to outfit my DIY CNC mill with an enclosure. As you can see from the next picture, this was not pretty.

The first steps in enclosing my CNC Mill

The need for an enclosure was to trap all of the chips from flying every where. which eventually tracks into every nook of the house I was renting a room in. Don't want room mates to feel like their home has turned into a loud machine shop.

Below is video I made of the first revision.

A post shared by Pugs Khunprachansri (@tahp) on Jan 6, 2018 at 12:52pm PST

making of revision prior to Apple CNC idea

I was not happy with the first revision due to the fact that it was made with basically cardboard thus didn't look like it fit the part. I was just prototyping ideas anyways and trying to build on the cheap just to learn and see what happens.

I eventually designed up a fairly functional enclosure. it worked pretty well, also kept a lot of noise trapped inside the box allowing me to run the machine pretty much when ever I wanted without interrupting room mates watching TV next room over.

After about a couple months of regular use the enclosure started to act up. Things like the door wouldn't stay latched up anymore when I opened it to inspect a part, remove a part or clean the machine.

almost completed revision 2

So the door would just fall down over my head and they'll be a little cursing. Sometimes the tablet would go as for as to fly off the door also just to add insult to my not so great days.

This is when I noticed my broken Apple Cinema display tucked in the back corner of the room. Without any second thought, revision 2 was quickly broken down into trash for the forever growing scrap material bin.

So my though was to build a new enclosure utilizing the Cinema display into it. Yureka!

The journey continues...