Ruso's Audio/Visual Blog

The Art:

You know this one is far off topic from music but it directly ties in to my music rig (to come) and my art.  My art is made from (usually) clear acrylic sheets which I cut on this machine that I have built and then shape with either a hand torch or a heat gun and fuse multiple pieces into sculptures. I usually then paint them with fluorescent paint and add UV LED's to add some radiant effects

The art itself usually looks a little something like this:


I have not made too many because my last milling machine (or router... depending on how you look at it) quite literally self destructed.

Now for the geeky part:

Behold... the demon machine! Fully equipped with 3 axis of computer controlled motion, vacuum suction and a beefy ZF2, courtesy of illionix for temporary use.

I designed and built it over the course of the last several months. It is made mostly from "80-20 T-Slotted Framing". I designed the mill originally in CAD (although it looked rather different) and after a few pretty major adjustments to the design (including the HUGE new NEMA 34 linear motion stage to move the gantry assembly). After a few more hours of work, this thing should be able to cut through all sorts of plastic/wood material but also light duty aluminum/other soft metal machinning.

First test:

My first project is going to be to build some better brackets for the stepper motors and also four bearing blocks with roller-bearings to fully stabilize the gantry. Currently the majority of the weight is supported by the giant ZF2 slide I have underneath and only a couple of aligning bearings which should be ok for very light work.

By the way I keep talking about this huge linear motion guide (it is in the center, up-side down):


Thanks for reading. The next post should be about how I build my new music rig and/or about how it operates (along with some secrets about my Live Set's internals).