Spindle and vacuum attachment

This is a model of the vacuum attachment for my Workbee CNC router. There is a mist spray coming from the left hand side of the spindle, blowing chips towards the vacuum port and nylon brush on the right side. It's a bit of an experiment, we'll see how it goes.

The vacuum attachment and brackets are 3D printed from this model.

I'm publishing this on GitHub because I feel there isn't enough examples of complicated CadQuery models. I also learn the most from reading others' code, so I hope someone can get some ideas from reading this. Please do keep in mind that this is just one of an endless list of jobs for me to get done out at work so at the moment the code is a bit of a mess. I hope to get some time to clean it up soon, I'm dreading coming back to this in a years time and trying to reiterate it!

There are lots of dimensions specified in dims.py that I wound up not using,
vac.py contains some unusual classes and programming because I was having a bit of a mental block on how to make a surface between the vacuum port start and end, and I think there is still some small math error in it, and
the assembly should really be broken down into several subassemblies rather than one flat structure as it currently is, I think some numerical errors in the solver are building up, sometimes that spindle isn't quite centered in the bracket.

nix

If you're lucky enough to use NixOS (and can use flakes, currently in the unstable branch but soon to be merged into the main branch), don't bother installing anything, just use this to run cq-editor:

nix run github:marcus7070/cq-flake/4a19ce0386930e247383e1d2d5ff7c3b676b9986

and this to create an environment with a cadquery-aware python-language-server (which will hopefully be picked up by your IDE):

nix shell github:marcus7070/cq-flake/4a19ce0386930e247383e1d2d5ff7c3b676b9986#cadquery-env

These commands will use pinned versions of everything, from CadQuery to glibc, and should be completly reproducible no matter what happens to CadQuery, conda, pypi, NixOS, or even QT. Hooray for nix!

Comments

Questions about Example

Hi @marcus7070

Thank you for putting this example out there, it's really helpful. I am trying it myself to get a handle on cadquery and how to use it for more complex models.

I've noticed that you hard reload imported modules often. Why is this necessary?

https://github.com/marcus7070/spindle-assy-example/blob/0be10a302792a37c9648c7bf81f1da9c0bd3af0e/bracket.py#L4

Also, I noticed you used a SimpleNamespace for storing variables across the parts. Why this option? As opposed to say a plain dictionary?

opened by noce2 1
brace does not line up with chimney

Because the mounting face on the chimney is extruded with both=True, it's actually two faces. The constraint selector only grabs one for the Plane constraint, so the mount is offset by half the face width.

opened by marcus7070 1
join chimney and vac into one part

There is no real reason to separate them now that I have the printing sorted. They are both printed in the same orientation.

There is also opportunity to enlarge the top circular port of the vac part and use more of a taper for better air flow.

opened by marcus7070 0