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almost an update,
here's the deal guys.. this week sucked. no other way to say it. however, i don't take life lemons, we lost two and a half days worth of work, I'll get them back. I'll have an update later tonight, but right now i am bound and determined to get as much done as i can, and i'm on a roll. Thanks for all the comments everybody, all your support has a great effect (really). Be back in a few hours.
here's the deal guys.. this week sucked. no other way to say it. however, i don't take life lemons, we lost two and a half days worth of work, I'll get them back. I'll have an update later tonight, but right now i am bound and determined to get as much done as i can, and i'm on a roll. Thanks for all the comments everybody, all your support has a great effect (really). Be back in a few hours.
ps: can somebody who knows how to embed youtube videos post cave johnsons rant about lemons in here for me.
Billet Birth Update Feb 2nd
thanks for throwing that up Vapian, god that is motivating!!!
Well, looking back this week did see a lot done, more aluminum bodies and slide covers, more polishing,,, just not as much NEW stuff as I was shooting for and one stupid little mistake that i would love to pinpoint on Dev, but it was all me, we'll get to that later. Anyway we are into the plastics now and near everything plastic is machined out of slabs of Delrin.
The tanks start out with this white Delrin that is FDA approved for food contact. When I was first prototyping I made a few batches of tanks out of the black stuff, because I thought i looked a little cooler ehhh, it kinda did,, though it also was kinda hard to see the juice level against the black background, and apparently something about the coloring wipes the FDA approval off it so.. that's a no go.
that slab is held in place by the vacuum workboard, and Dev starts out by leveling the piece dead flat.
Delrin is some super tough plastic, but she plows though it like butter. Here she's using an end mill to make the ball valve housing.
What sucks about making small parts is that after a bit, it doesn't matter how powerful your machine is, the little tiny end mills from here forward are super fragile and have to be ran really slow to keep from snapping' um'.
so.. after Devs done with the tiny bits, this comes out. The little end mills have cut a tiny little channel that houses that red silicon gasket perfectly.
extreme closeup...
The faces of the tanks are a little trickier to cut then that Delrin is, it likes to melt and make a mess if you cut it to fast (sometimes even if you don't) so I keep an eye on um as they get cut up. But pretty much the same routine, the vacuum table holds the stock into place while Dev dose all the work and i get all the credit
oh, and we made them little gaskety thingys this week too, we start out with some FDA approved silicon rubber sheets and cut it up into strips
the little cookie cutter on the left ..
has a strong magnet on the back that attaches it to ..
a 2000 pound press that stamps um out, so thats fun.
K, onward to battery contacts first we cut um up on the table saw into bout the size we want,
then lay some vacuum cording into the vac table about the same size to hold it .
ok, here is where things go downhill for me this week .
still going downhill i just don't know it yet
and further downhill...
all the way downhill. every single one, oversized by 3 thousandths of an in . K, well 3 thousands of an inch is about the thickness of a piece of printer paper, or a little less than the thickness of human hair .. but it's more than enough to make everyone of these useless junk .nice Delrin is not a cheap as free plastic, thats a good chunk of cash down the drain, but thats nothing compared to the time lost, so this was a bigggg bummer I wanted soooo badly to blame this on Dev, but it was all me, (hell, i made Dev so it all falls on me anyway) the code for these I wrote back in July and never change it as they were perfect, but in that time i did change how Dev interprets what i tell her to do, and how to do it . so TAKE THE LEMONS!!!
Alright, so today i woke up nice and early, snorted some kopi luwak , and re wrote it (well, tweaked it), ran it, it was perfect, got moving forward again. Here is the blank of Delrin bout ready to go into its jig for the second round of machining...
these are the channels that provide the clearance for the battery contacts .
and here we got um' all leveled down to the right height neat-o, things are working...
once they get done with their second operation, they can run free for a little bit
now they need the machining on the front and back for the contacts to sit in and lock into place,,, but the tricky part is holding them down, vacuum wont work in this case and we don't want to screw um down cuz that takes forever . so this jig works using paper as a clamp .
the jig is oversized length wise by 2 thousandths of an inch, so when i load each part with a strip of paper in-between, the compression of the paper holds um into place with about 35lbs of force neat
all done with the 3rd operation, time to flip the parts, i can just pull up on the paper to pop each one out, flip um and reuse the paper to clamp um' up tight again.
and done.
now the parts all machined we can put it the battery contacts. They snap right into place and are locked into the grooves we machined.
here they are snapped into place..
and see if they slide into place,
ahh, so that's it for this week, I have some time to make up, but i'll suck it up one way or another. I accounted for a few hiccups in my ETA, but I still want them two days back Next we got electronic thingys to make so you can look forward to seeing lots of resistors and stuff in the next update....
Sorry this update is so late, but things got done, and i know you guys on the pre order want me working, I'm on it....
thanks for throwing that up Vapian, god that is motivating!!!
Well, looking back this week did see a lot done, more aluminum bodies and slide covers, more polishing,,, just not as much NEW stuff as I was shooting for and one stupid little mistake that i would love to pinpoint on Dev, but it was all me, we'll get to that later. Anyway we are into the plastics now and near everything plastic is machined out of slabs of Delrin.
The tanks start out with this white Delrin that is FDA approved for food contact. When I was first prototyping I made a few batches of tanks out of the black stuff, because I thought i looked a little cooler ehhh, it kinda did,, though it also was kinda hard to see the juice level against the black background, and apparently something about the coloring wipes the FDA approval off it so.. that's a no go.
that slab is held in place by the vacuum workboard, and Dev starts out by leveling the piece dead flat.
Delrin is some super tough plastic, but she plows though it like butter. Here she's using an end mill to make the ball valve housing.
What sucks about making small parts is that after a bit, it doesn't matter how powerful your machine is, the little tiny end mills from here forward are super fragile and have to be ran really slow to keep from snapping' um'.
so.. after Devs done with the tiny bits, this comes out. The little end mills have cut a tiny little channel that houses that red silicon gasket perfectly.
extreme closeup...
The faces of the tanks are a little trickier to cut then that Delrin is, it likes to melt and make a mess if you cut it to fast (sometimes even if you don't) so I keep an eye on um as they get cut up. But pretty much the same routine, the vacuum table holds the stock into place while Dev dose all the work and i get all the credit
oh, and we made them little gaskety thingys this week too, we start out with some FDA approved silicon rubber sheets and cut it up into strips
the little cookie cutter on the left ..
has a strong magnet on the back that attaches it to ..
a 2000 pound press that stamps um out, so thats fun.
K, onward to battery contacts first we cut um up on the table saw into bout the size we want,
then lay some vacuum cording into the vac table about the same size to hold it .
ok, here is where things go downhill for me this week .
still going downhill i just don't know it yet
and further downhill...
all the way downhill. every single one, oversized by 3 thousandths of an in . K, well 3 thousands of an inch is about the thickness of a piece of printer paper, or a little less than the thickness of human hair .. but it's more than enough to make everyone of these useless junk .nice Delrin is not a cheap as free plastic, thats a good chunk of cash down the drain, but thats nothing compared to the time lost, so this was a bigggg bummer I wanted soooo badly to blame this on Dev, but it was all me, (hell, i made Dev so it all falls on me anyway) the code for these I wrote back in July and never change it as they were perfect, but in that time i did change how Dev interprets what i tell her to do, and how to do it . so TAKE THE LEMONS!!!
Alright, so today i woke up nice and early, snorted some kopi luwak , and re wrote it (well, tweaked it), ran it, it was perfect, got moving forward again. Here is the blank of Delrin bout ready to go into its jig for the second round of machining...
these are the channels that provide the clearance for the battery contacts .
and here we got um' all leveled down to the right height neat-o, things are working...
once they get done with their second operation, they can run free for a little bit
now they need the machining on the front and back for the contacts to sit in and lock into place,,, but the tricky part is holding them down, vacuum wont work in this case and we don't want to screw um down cuz that takes forever . so this jig works using paper as a clamp .
the jig is oversized length wise by 2 thousandths of an inch, so when i load each part with a strip of paper in-between, the compression of the paper holds um into place with about 35lbs of force neat
all done with the 3rd operation, time to flip the parts, i can just pull up on the paper to pop each one out, flip um and reuse the paper to clamp um' up tight again.
and done.
now the parts all machined we can put it the battery contacts. They snap right into place and are locked into the grooves we machined.
here they are snapped into place..
and see if they slide into place,
ahh, so that's it for this week, I have some time to make up, but i'll suck it up one way or another. I accounted for a few hiccups in my ETA, but I still want them two days back Next we got electronic thingys to make so you can look forward to seeing lots of resistors and stuff in the next update....
Sorry this update is so late, but things got done, and i know you guys on the pre order want me working, I'm on it....
Good question, as i just changed it to PETG from polycarbonate... for the better chemical resistance... i don't vape any tank cracking juice myself but i did get a bottle of the most potent cinnamon juice on planet earth and let it sit for a week in the polycarbonate tank... it didn't crack but it did hurt its feelings in that it kinda made the plastic blurry... Sooooo now its PETG, that is also FDA approved, and has a better chemical resistance, still, the acid in some of the fruit flavors is potent stuff so i can not vouch for every juice out there. I also got some clear PVC in the mail that I have been wanting to play with for face material too, ahhh,, i have way to many things i want to do... thanks for asking that though,
DD of BB... that has to be the lengthy-est, most detailed post ever. You win the prize! Thanks for the picturesque update!
sorry you had a rough week dude, don't beat yourself up. You just started makin these! always stuff to iron out in the beginning! Judging from the kinda people i've seen on here, i think you could have some really big hiccups and we'd still have your back!
i had a bust couple days too, i'm out in kansas city right now, installing a pneumatic tube system, big one. we've put in over a mile of pipe/wire. got to testing and calibration only to find we had bad connections/equipment/wire everywhere. after over a day of trouble shooting found out it was what we were splicing the wires with, these new connectors, instead of the old brand, and a couple chips on the boards that got fried in the process. shoulda been on my way home today, now won't be leavin till monday
and for a positive note doug, you now have #1 on a google search of "billet box"!!
i had a bust couple days too, i'm out in kansas city right now, installing a pneumatic tube system, big one. we've put in over a mile of pipe/wire. got to testing and calibration only to find we had bad connections/equipment/wire everywhere. after over a day of trouble shooting found out it was what we were splicing the wires with, these new connectors, instead of the old brand, and a couple chips on the boards that got fried in the process. shoulda been on my way home today, now won't be leavin till monday
and for a positive note doug, you now have #1 on a google search of "billet box"!!
Saying I am impressed is like saying the Grand Canyon is a ditch...somewhat of an understatement....wow!
Here is a meme I made to help cheer you along...
Here is a meme I made to help cheer you along...
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TANKS for the update DD!
Lookin good, sounds like lemons in the air last week, Lost a day my self- my 3phase converter was blowing capacitors - turns out it was 0k, but the heads on my air compressor needz a rebuild now!
I feel Your pain!
Lookin good, sounds like lemons in the air last week, Lost a day my self- my 3phase converter was blowing capacitors - turns out it was 0k, but the heads on my air compressor needz a rebuild now!
I feel Your pain!
cant wait for these to be done so i can order one from your next batch! i missed your pre-order window=(
You and me both.
Man... looking at those most recent pics... I think I need to change my underpants.
DD do not fret.....your loyal vapers are in this battle with you. We will stand and fight till the end,to spread good words to all the common folk that are still not sure of the true art "BB "you have created.
I am here Master!
Brought a tear to your eye didn't it......
I am here Master!
Brought a tear to your eye didn't it......
I will have one though :
Can sympathize totally with R&D problems and tossing expensive stock, it took 3 years to get my avatar running up front, thousandths count.
So beyond impressed with DD. The BB is just more impressive with every step of the creation you show us.
Thank You
Thank You
I know that this has probably been asked before, but are you planning on making this variable wattage also? Just curious. These things look amazing well built. The Nivel chips are now available here in the US, so that's why I was asking.
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