Semi-manual lathe work with USB-BOB
Posted: Fri Oct 18, 2024 9:43 am
The microlathe I converted to Acorn earlier this year uses the USB-BOB board to give us semi-manual control. I love this, and it was the main reason I chose acorn - because sometimes you just don't need it to be automated, you just need a quick part.
We're a motion picture film scanning service, and getting parts made for old hardware (and new) used to be an easy and cheap thing. Every city had film labs, and local machine shops knew how to make custom parts for these machines. Now it's harder to do, and a hell of a lot more expensive, so we set up our own small machines for making stuff we need.
Here's Acorn and USB-BOB being used to turn the plastic cores we put the film on - from standard 16mms wide, down to 9.5mm (an old home-movie standard mainly used in Europe). I had this up and running in about an hour the other day:
We're a motion picture film scanning service, and getting parts made for old hardware (and new) used to be an easy and cheap thing. Every city had film labs, and local machine shops knew how to make custom parts for these machines. Now it's harder to do, and a hell of a lot more expensive, so we set up our own small machines for making stuff we need.
Here's Acorn and USB-BOB being used to turn the plastic cores we put the film on - from standard 16mms wide, down to 9.5mm (an old home-movie standard mainly used in Europe). I had this up and running in about an hour the other day: