Category: Software

The HQ Sixteen has been running at higher speeds as Mary practices using its stitch regulator and the vibrations shook several of the table shims (blocks, whatever) onto the floor. I hope a layer of EVA foam provides enough compliance to keep them in place:

The foam is 2 mm thick, so subtracting that from the nominal thickness makes the new blocks come out right.

A short module extracts the footprint for export as an SVG image to laser-cut both the foam and the adhesive sheet required to stick it in place:

module ShimPad(Thickness = PadThick) {

    if (Thickness)
        linear_extrude(height=Thickness)
            projection(cut=true)
                ShimBlock();
    else
        projection(cut=true)
            ShimBlock();

}

It turns out linear_extrude() chokes on a zero height.

When handed a nonzero Thickness, the code generates a simulated foam sheet:

The footprint looks about like you’d expect:

Import into LightBurn, duplicate it sufficiently, set the speed & power & kerf for EVA foam, then cut ’em out:

Ditto for the adhesive, stick together, and upgrade the fleet.

If these shake loose, snippets of adhesive film will stick them firmly to the underside of the table panels.

Update: Yeah, they needed sticky snippets. Whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on with that machine!

The object of the game being to tilt the LED strip lights at (maybe) 30° to put more light higher on the wall and further out on the ceiling, with the overriding constraint of no visible holes. Given their eventual home atop the window moulding along the front wall of the Living Sewing Room, these seemed adequate:

The hole on the angled part fits an M4 brass insert and the recessed holes capture the washer-like head of a sharp-point lath screw.

Two pairs applied to the lights sitting atop the Fabric Cabinets served to verify the fit:

They’re held firmly by the aluminum extrusion and don’t need a bigger footprint to remain stable.

So I made another six, stuck on ⅞ inch strips of aluminized Mylar (cut from a bag in much better condition), and drilled holes where they can’t be seen:

It’s almost too bright in there with 3 × 40 W of LED lights washing the wall and ceiling:

I don’t like the cold 6000 K color temperature, but Mary doesn’t mind it. They fill the Sewing Table with shadowless / glareless light, although that kind of light makes the place look like a store.

I think moving the strip lower and away from the wall could hide the entire mount from view.

Contrary to what I expected, the Mylar reflectors must be at least an inch tall to avoid Baily’s Beads seen from across the room:

With all that in mind, we’ll run these for a while to shake out any other improvements.

The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub Gist:

The Handi-Quilter HQ Sixteen rides on two tracks along the 11 foot length of the table, with an unsupported 8 foot span between the legs on each end:

Contemporary versions of the table have support struts in the middle that our OG version lacks and, as a result, our table had a distinct sag in the middle. During the course of aligning the table top into a plane surface with tapered wood shims, I discovered the floor was half an inch out of level between the table legs.

Now that the whole thing has settled into place, I measured the shim thicknesses and made tidy blocks to replace them:

The OpenSCAD code has an array with the thickness and the number of blocks:

SHIM_THICK = 0;
SHIM_COUNT = 1;

Shims = [
    [3.5,1],
    [5.0,3],
    [6.0,2],
    [6.5,1],
    [7.0,1]
];

Yes, I call them “blocks” here and wrote “shims” in the code. A foolish consistency, etc.

The model is a chamfered block with a chunk removed to leave a tongue of the appropriate thickness:

Building them with the label against the platform produces a nice nubbly surface:

The labels print first and look lonely out there by themselves:

The rest of the first layer fills in around the labels:

Putting the labels on the bottom makes the wipe tower only two layers tall and eliminates filament changes above those layers. Those eight blocks still took a little over three hours, because there’s a lot of perimeter wrapped around not much interior.

Having had the foresight to draw a sketch showing where each block would go, I slid one next to its wood shim, yanked the shim out, and declared victory:

The tension rod welded under the table rail prevents even more sag, but the struts under the new version of the table show other folks were unhappy with the sag of this one. Another leg or two seems appropriate.

With the table leveled and the surface aligned, the HQ Sixteen glides easily in all directions. The result isn’t perfect and Mary keeps the anchor block at hand, but the machine now displays much less enthusiasm for rolling toward the middle of the table.

The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub Gist:

My version of a mount for the HQ Sixteen’s “stylus laser” clamps a 1 inch polypropylene ball between two plates:

The plates have a sphere subtracted from them and a kerf sliced across the sphere’s equator for clamping room:

Given that this is a relatively low-stress situation, I embedded BOSL2 nuts to produce threads in the plate rather than use brass inserts.

The side plates start as simple rectangles:

Subtracting the electronics pod shape from those slabs matches them exactly to the curvalicious corner:

The weird angle comes from tilting the mount to aim the laser in roughly the right direction when perpendicular to the plates:

That angle can be 0° to 30°, although 25° seems about right. The slab sides neither stick out the top nor leave gaps in the corner over that range, after some cut-and-try tinkering sizing.

One of the M3 screws just did not want to go into its hole:

A bad day in the screw factory, I suppose.

The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub Gist: