Something for your Dremel...

[sdudley]

I know this isn't an "electronics" project, but I thought someone might still find it useful:



The Instructable link is here:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Mini-Ta ... l-rotary-/

Stacy

[elementalrage]

Might be good for people who build little models or for cutting PCBs. Using any wood other than pine would kill those blades in a heart beat and they're not cheap. It's just expecting too much out of that little tool.

[brad]

Stacy that is super cool!

Congratulations on a fantastic instructable and I see that others think the same way also. you have had over 4,000 views and have a perfect score of 5 out of 5 after 19 votes!

I think we have a winner for the dremel contest

[sdudley]

I built it to cut acrylic for my edge lit signs (1/8" and 1/4" thick). I am still experimenting but it's working out pretty nice so far. It's definitely not something you would want to use for precision work but it's great for the stuff I am doing. I have yet to try and cut any wood harder than pine (the small sample piece in the video is 3/8" thick select pine craft). I will soon be buying some Poplar Board and Red Oak since it is readily available at the hardware store. I'll let you know if elementalrage is correct about the longevity of the blade.

I will be shooting another video of a project that I am going to make with it so I can show people that it does actually work. I am going to make a 3D desktop nameplate. The nameplate will have a wooden base to hold small acrylic letters. Each letter will be individually lit using an LED. The letters will be staggered and slightly twisted to see the front and back edges while looking straight at it. This will hopefully enhance the 3D effect. I plan to have it complete by this weekend (Yea... Brad's heard me say that before - )

I was experimenting a little tonight and came up with a design for the letters. Below is a picture of how I plan to make them work. There is a protruding part of the letter which will sit into the base to hold it up and the LED will sit under that and in turn light up the letter. You can see the two letters I was experimenting with tonight.

IMG_02.jpg (27.23 KiB) Viewed 20090 times

D.jpg (85.86 KiB) Viewed 20090 times

R.jpg (86.86 KiB) Viewed 20090 times

Forgive me for the horrible pictures. I just grabbed the camera and shot so I could post this.

Stacy

[elementalrage]

The acrylic is a decent material to work with and shouldn't hurt the blade too bad. The only issue you may have is with heating it up. If you don't send it through at a proper speed, it may melt back together - ask me how I know... ha! Slow the dremel down so it can cut the acrylic and not melt it.

The Poplar should be fine, but the oak will wear the blade down real quick, especially if you go across the grain - tough stuff.

I hope you don't think I'm knocking on you. You put forth quite the effort with the Dremel table and it looks good. I have 25 years of woodworking experience and sell hardwoods for a living, so I have a bit of insight. I also sold Dremel tools for about 8 years, so I know their limitations. A couple of tools that are closely related, but can handle more are the 1/4" laminate trimmer and the Rotozip. Both of them take 1/4" collet bits and have some power behind them. They're worth looking into.

Good luck!

darrin

[brad]

Very nice Stacy! you are the Dremel King! so from now on I shall call you DK.

But seriously, you have done some amazing work here and I just checked the instructable again and the number of views has tripled since last time I looked (over 15,000 views) and you still have a perfect score after 39 votes. A task that I have not even come close to achieving!

AND DRUM ROLL PLEASE....

You even got yourself featured on the instructables newsletter! (once again, a task that I have not been able to achieve, and this is only your first instructable.

[sdudley]

Yea, I am rather taken back by some of the response it has gotten.
I think it's fun to look at the stats and see all of the places that have referenced it. I clicked a few of the links and read some blog sites, forum chats, etc. and have had a good laugh.
I have to be honest... I really don't care if I bring home one of the Dremel Trios, I am just having a grand 'ole time watching it spread around the internet. It's Interesting to say the least.

[sdudley]

The acrylic is a decent material to work with and shouldn't hurt the blade too bad. The only issue you may have is with heating it up. If you don't send it through at a proper speed, it may melt back together - ask me how I know... ha! Slow the dremel down so it can cut the acrylic and not melt it.

The Poplar should be fine, but the oak will wear the blade down real quick, especially if you go across the grain - tough stuff.

I hope you don't think I'm knocking on you. You put forth quite the effort with the Dremel table and it looks good. I have 25 years of woodworking experience and sell hardwoods for a living, so I have a bit of insight. I also sold Dremel tools for about 8 years, so I know their limitations. A couple of tools that are closely related, but can handle more are the 1/4" laminate trimmer and the Rotozip. Both of them take 1/4" collet bits and have some power behind them. They're worth looking into.

Good luck!

darrin

I was going to purchase a Rotozip so my boss let me borrow his for a weekend. It just wasn't versatile enough and the Dremel company has really outdone themselves with attachments/accessories/gadgets so I decided on the Dremel. Besides, the Dremel has proven to be plenty powerful for the hobby stuff I do. I was just hacking up an 18"x24" acrylic sheet tonight (1/4"thick) and the table saw is working wonders (for what it is mind you).

I am most likely going to get the right angle attachment and add another feature... a mini-disc sander. I think that would be a very easy modification.

Anyway, I didn't think you were knocking me at all. You were being honest and stating the obvious, it's not good for anything more than little hobby projects which is why it is perfect for the stuff I do. Most wood tools are too big and the mini tools I have looked into are just far to expensive for what they do.

I think the Dremel has proven that it is worth it's weight in gold. I just don't know why I waited so long to buy one!

Stacy

[sdudley]

Well I guess I forgot to post the results of this project.

I did end up winning a Dremel (very cool) and got a runner up with the same project in another contest. All-in-all I'd say I made out pretty well.

I had planned to post an instructable on making the 3D edge lit letters but it didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. The LED's are not very bright LED's, which are needed for this type of project. Also, the bends in the letters really take a toll on how well the light makes it's way through the acrylic. Notice the I, S and E get pretty dull after the sharp bends.

The wood and acrylic were cut, routed, shaped, and sanded using the mini-tablesaw I made.

Here are a few pictures showing the end result. It makes a nice night light as long as it's very dark in the room.

complete_not_lit_up.jpg (38.96 KiB) Viewed 20056 times

instructables_lit.jpg (201.5 KiB) Viewed 20056 times

robot_lit.jpg (72.14 KiB) Viewed 20056 times

side_view_01.jpg (37.87 KiB) Viewed 20056 times

switch_jack_plugged_in.jpg (36.86 KiB) Viewed 20056 times

LEDs_fully_soldered.jpg (38.85 KiB) Viewed 20056 times

LEDs_resistor_pos_neg.jpg (34.28 KiB) Viewed 20056 times

Stacy

[brad]

Thanks for posting this Stacy

Congrats again on winning the dremel contest and also for coming runner up in the other.

How have you got the LED's connected? All in parallel and then in series with a resistor?

[sdudley]

How have you got the LED's connected? All in parallel and then in series with a resistor?

Yes

parallel_photo.png (8.66 KiB) Viewed 20051 times

[brad]

Yes

You talk too much

[sdudley]

You talk too much

Sorry, I was just busy thinking about something...

if matter and energy are really different forms of the same thing. Matter can be turned into energy, and energy into matter.
For example, consider a simple hydrogen atom, basically composed of a single proton. This subatomic particle has a mass of

0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 001 672 kg

This is a tiny mass indeed. But in everyday quantities of matter there are a lot of atoms! For instance, in one kilogram of pure water, the mass of hydrogen atoms amounts to just slightly more than 111 grams, or 0.111 kg.
This tells me the amount of energy this mass would be equivalent to, if it were all suddenly turned into energy. It says that to find the energy, I can simply multiply the mass by the square of the speed of light, this number being 300,000,000 meters per second (a very large number):


= 0.111 x 300,000,000 x 300,000,000
= 10,000,000,000,000,000 Joules

This is an incredible amount of energy! A Joule is not a large unit of energy ... one Joule is about the energy released when you drop a textbook to the floor. But the amount of energy in 30 grams of hydrogen atoms is equivalent to burning hundreds of thousands of gallons of gasoline!

Stacy

[brad]

A simple yes would have been fine

[sdudley]

A simple yes would have been fine

I thought I tried that in my first response?