We held our second Idaho Camp at Dirk Dunham’s shop in Eagle, ID over the weekend. It was a nice mix of “newbies” and more experienced owners, and we covered a pretty wide range of topics. One area that got more than normal exposure was the building, installation, and use of a “fourth axis (indexer)” since Dirk and Pat Fulghum have collaborated (with Mike Richards, and Brady Watson) to create their own units.
Mike was on hand with an “external driver/power supply” for the indexer which he has rigged up in place of the interior control box units both Dirk and Pat have installed. He gave a short talk on the electronic side of things involved, and the Campers had a chance to compare Dirk’s interior version with Mike’s external rig. Mike also brought along a few dial indicator gizmos he uses to establish the “run out”and accuracy of his Z axis.
Pat spoke about his Box cutter program, and showed how we could use it to build cabinets.
Dirk showed off his “X axis”version of the indexer (Pat’s is set up to run in the Y axis), and he also showed off a beautiful , and portable wine rack prototype he’s built.
Mike Ross brought in a sample of a skate board that he is building for a company, and explained the process involved in setting up the jig to create the final, laminated product.
We did a session on using vacuum jigs, and Pat brought along his home made portable pump unit with a pod.
(One interesting sidelight here is that since Pat has been busy building a new shop over the last year his pump was stored, and not used for almost a year. When he got it out to bring to the Camp there was still a part attached to one of his “pods” and his vacuum gauge was reading 15″of mercury. Figuring that this was a false reading he tried to separate the part from the pod and could not! This means that his rig had held 15″of vacuum for almost a year !!!).
Pat also may have the only white Shopbot table I have seen to date……
Pictures of the above mentioned items will be on the Shopbot Flickr page for everyone to see.
We had Campers here from Washington State, California, Utah, and all over the state of Idaho, so there was a LOT of traveling involved. I think everyone went home with some new ideas, and plans to try an indexer of their own pretty soon !
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