March Continues. Farewell, Justin.

Hello there, Kyle here.

It’s March 239th 2020. https://whatdayinmarchisit.com/

If going insane indoors wasn’t enough, my long time close friend and former roommate Justin Corwin died suddenly from a fast moving illness (not covid) on Thursday.

He was an amazing individual who had more knowledge in his brain than I’ll ever be able the cram in, and still, somehow he was always a humble servant to all around him, leading Crashspace’s officers as president and keeping it real as an engineer at Hyperloop and Disney Research. I could write a book on how incredible Justin was, and it still wouldn’t do him justice. He was still young (only a few years older than me) and his absence in my life will always leave a wide gaping hole moving forward. His kindness and generosity in life is something I can only hope to echo in his memory. Fair winds and following seas in what may come, you were a true friend Justin.

I’ll take the time to do him more justice in a later post, because honestly, I don’t want to be that sad right now.

Distractions

Well, as if death wasn’t a sad enough subject, I’ve also been for the most part, alone, in all of this. After pimping out the house and being alone and bored long enough, I got up to no good out in the garage.

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I milled some soft jaws and machined a reducer ring for a friend’s transmission that would fit a truck he was dropping it into and rebuilding. This was a quick afternoon project but a lot of fun.

I also made a neat robot base for @leanrum ‘s robot arm

I took a waterjet part and added a fillet to it on the mill in the same soft jaws I’d created for the ring. This was a job for work and turned out great. The part eventually got powder coated and is part of a large robot that does… something ( I’ll write an update on that when it’s public in a month or so).

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Next it was back to swarf cubes

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I set up a 12 position manufacturing fixture for Swarf Cubes and fabricated around 40 of them in just a few days. This will be the final run of cubes, I’ve shipped 8 or so and have ~ 20 remaining.

I fired up onshape and designed a knife rack for my growing knife collection in the kitchen. It uses magnets to hold the knifes and has cubbies on the bottom for sharpening stones. It also has a recess and some slots for underlighting to light up the countertop it’s placed on. It’s 3 parts and entirely machined.

The motors I’ve been eyeing for the O-Arm project finally became available. I ordered a couple and they came in last week. I’m very excited to start development on the cycloid gearboxes.

In related to that news, I found an awesome Monarch 10EE lathe on craigslist and lucked out / got it delivered on Friday. With a 4 jaw chuck I’ll be able to make the eccentric drive shafts for the gearbox at high accuracy, as well as turn the housings to create tight tolerance diameter fits between components.

The runout on the spindle is around .0001-.0002″. It’s in great shape for a machine built in 1946, and I’ll be refurbishing it over the next couple months, getting the whole thing cleaned and power hooked up, I’ll need a phase converter as it’s 230- 3 phase and I only have single phase in the garage. I may do a blog post on phase converters when that happens in a month or so.

This update’s a bit short, but, so is life. so get out there and live it. stare up at the sky and watch the clouds. spit into the wind, eat cheesecake and cheesesteaks. Hail Satin and Satan and all other forms of upholstery and Love your friends. You never know when you’ll see them again.

I’m not crying that’s just rain.