Electronic Lead Screw Project

Phil,

Thank you for your help and for the offer, which I accept, to 3D print a lid for the metal box I am going to buy.

If the box you use is right for you, it will also be good for me. So, in order for me to buy the box, please tell me the address on Ebay where you bought yours.
So, if my "LED and key buttyons" is the same as yours, the dimension issue will be overcome.

I bought the LED and key buttons that I have here:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/392211641011
At this address you will find an image with some measurements of it.

Did you use any cover for the buttons, as Clough and Jason did, or did you leave them in plain view coming out of the holes?

Thanks
Dias Costa

For the labels google water slide decals. You print the artwork onto a special paper. This is then varnished with two coat car top spray varnish from Halfords. Soak in water and the decal will slide off and you gently manoeuvre it into position and gently firm down. Finally spray varnish to seal the lot. It’s very straightforward but practise on scrap first. I tried to see what happened without the spray on the decal, when soaked, it disintegrated to mush. The paper is very cheap compared to what you use!

it gives truly excellent results

dacosta, , I suggested earlier that turning top hat type buttons  which can go through drilled holes will work so they won’t pop out.  Phil indicated the spring on the led board buttons will be sufficient to return it, but obviously you will need to check the sizes with care.  Use plastic if possible, you don’t want any conduction from damp fingers. 

Edited By Zan on 21/01/2020 15:02:28

Edited By Zan on 21/01/2020 15:06:57

Dias,

Here is the link to the box I bought, it is the 1590B version

Ebay Link

Phil

I printed them in flexible material. The files are on the clough42’s thingiverse page.

Dias

I made top hat buttons with slightly domed heads from a small piece of hard plastic found in my scrap box, they were all made circular. Where Clough42 has triangular buttons mine are a larger diameter, a bit fiddly to do, just make one and try for size then adjust as necessary.

Dennis

Dias,

I'm printing the top now , the measurements look the same as mine.

I'll print some buttons as well.

Phil

Hi Phil,

Phil: Here is the link to the box I bought, it is the 1590B version
Me: Thanks for the link to box 1590B.
I already ordered it.

Phil: I'm printing the top now, the measurements look the same as mine. I'll print some buttons as well.
Me: Thank you very much for this. I am embarrassed because I don't know how to thank you enough. Please read the PM.

Dias Costa

Hi Jason,

Thanks for the information.
Jason: I printed them in flexible material. The files are on the clough42’s thingiverse page.
Me: I had already found the files from a link in your nice video "Clough42 ELS electronics completed and working." on Youtube.
From your experience, the buttons made of flexible material do not have much friction with the walls of the holes?

best regards
Dias Costa

Hi Dennis,

Thank you for your attention and suggestion.
A few weeks ago, before Phil offered me the 3D printed box top, when thinking how I could make the buttons, one of the ways I considered a solution similar to the one you refer to: machining the buttons on the lathe. The other way was to look for buttons and cut them to fit the holes (see here for example: https://www.rubber-keypad.com/Rubber-Button-pl45996.html).
I could possibly find buttons with the appropriate dimensions, but I suspect that there would be serious friction problems with the hole walls.

Best regards
Dias Costa

None that I can discern. They’re not a tight fit in the holes.

So I wanted to 3d print the lid but wanted to customise it to my requirements, to this end I downloaded Fusion 360 as it's a product that I wanted to learn so I loaded up the STEP file for the lid and over yesterday pm and this evening I worked out that svg files were the way to go so downloaded Inkscape and learned how to create svg files from text and here is the result:

I'm happy with it but haven't tried printing it yet, not bad for a 68 year old!

Roger

Brilliant!!!

I've been struggling to do similar. Been getting mixed results from outputting STL from Inkscape and manipulating it with 3 or 4 different packages. I shall kick myself if the answer is to work directly from SVG.

Well done you!

Dave

I did the same thing on my 3D printed lid in fusion 360 but when I printed it the text didn't come out to well, print it with the smallest layer height you can but it will take a lot longer to print.

Hi Phil,

I bought myself a resin printer so hoping that I can get good results on the fine detail.

Got priorities at the moment like re-assembling my mini lathe after stripping the teeth on the drive pulley, I also decided as it's in bits I'll fit dro as well so got that to do before anything else.

Roger

Hi Dave,

If you use Fusion 360 you can 'INSERT' svg file and then 'Extrude' either up for emboss or down '-' as I did.

This was the first time I'd used CAD, simples , just had to deal with sky high frustration levels

Roger

Roger,

I've been using Fusion360 for a couple of years and I never new you could do that every day is a school day thanks for the tip.

I spent ages inserting and placing the text on the front surface .

Phil

Roger,

You should be fine with a resin printer the resolution should be more than enough, my Ender3 struggled with the small text above the LEDs.

Phil

Just found this Adafruit tutorial on creating a box, I found it easier to pick up than some of the others, lots of ways of stringing dimensions together to make adjusting easier. Adafruit snap fit cases

Roger

Me neither; I'm moderately fluent in both Inkscape and Fusion and hadn't spotted that, despite looking! (I must have wasted a full week investigating alternatives that don't quite fly. Arghh!)

Ideally Fusion would be as good at text as Inkscape, but it only does the basics. Inkscape has many excellent features, but it's not a CAD tool. Nice to know there's a way of getting the two to work together!

Ta

Dave

Hi Phil,

I thank you very much for the great favor of printing for me, in 3D, the cover and the buttons for the control box of the "Electronic Lead Screw".
I've already done a temporary assembly of the cover with the Led & Key Display (L&KD) and the adjustment between the L&KD and the cover is good and the buttons work very well.
To complete this part of the project, I still need to receive the metal box, which comes from China with an estimated arrival between 11 and 20 February, but, probably given the current circumstances, it will take longer to arrive. For this reason, I looked better here, in Portugal, and found the Hammond 1590B box and already ordered it.

Questions:
1 - the first button from the left (PWR) at this moment has no function. Do you know if there is any future goal for him in the project?
2 - How did you write the text FWR FWD / REV FEED / THR MM / IN / TPI given the scarcity of space above the LEDs? Any suggestions, please ...
3 - I already have the stepper motor (Nema 23, double shaft purchased from ArcEuroTrade a few years ago) and I want to use it in this project for my EMCO Compact 8 lathe.
But I still haven't bought the driver for the stepper motor and, not being interested in the closed loop stepper driver, I'm not sure to choose another controller. As previously reported I tried the TB6560 driver and somehow damaged the TI board and I don't want to repeat ...
Any suggestion, please?

Best Regards
Dias Costa

Edited By dcosta on 08/02/2020 18:56:59