Milling Setup

Preperation for using the milling machine.

^^ on the left: the tool clamp which holds the drill part in place. For selecting the right size, you want the tightest fit possible while also being loose enough to remove the drill part by hand.
on the right: the chuck which holds the told and clamp in the machine.

^^ inserting the clamping tool into the chuck. All the clamping pieces pop into place in the chuck no matter what the tool size is.

^^ the drill part inserted into the clamp which is inserted into the chuck. This is then screwed onto the rotating part of the machine and tightened with a spanner.

Leather Dying Instructable

This is another instructable, this time for dying leather. For my camera I am having a leather feature across the front and reflect this in the handle and reel by having panels of leather on both of these. The reason that I was trying to dye leather was because the leather I wish to use is a very intense orange and it was becoming apparent that it was going to be difficult and expensive and this seemed to be the easiest way to get the right intensity that I wanted.

I also took a wee trip over to textiles to get some advice on dying leather and they weren't any use. They also told me to use this dye that I is used in this tutorial saying that it's suitable for leather. After investigating this and contacting the dye company, they inform me that they no longer sell this dye and it's not suitable for leather. This means that textiles were no use. But after browsing for a long time online I finally found a seller of the dye and decided to attempt dying the leather with this method.


For this you need:

-Dylon Cold Water Dye in a colour of your choice (I used orange!!)
-A sample of leather preferably in white or shades of. (I have used a dark tanned colour leather as this was the lightest colour I had available at the time)
-A small container
-A stick to agitate the leather
-A basin

-125grams table salt

1. Take the deep basin that is big enough to fit your sample of leather in and fill it with cold water.

2. Make sure you have your leather and dye close by. I suggest that you take a piece of wet and dry sandpaper and very lightly sand the shine from the leather. According to the textiles department this helps the dye to stick better to the leather!!

3. Dampen your leather and then place this aside until needed later on.

4. Take your container and place your Dylon Cold Water Dye into it making sure that you pierce the lid of the dye first allowing it to be released.

5. Fill the container with hot water allowing the pot to release the dye.

6. Into the container of dye and hot water add your salt.

7. Agitate the mixture ensuring that the salt to dissolve in the hot water.

8. When the salt has been dissolved and the most amount of dye has been released they water is ready to be transferred.
9. Remove the leather from the basin of water wringing out as much water as possible.
10. Add the mixture of hot water, dye and salt into the basin of cold water, removing the pot of dye, or placing it to the side.

11. Place your dampened leather into the mixture in the large basin.

12. Agitate the mixture with your stick to make sure the leather is completely covered into the mixture.
13. Because I was dying a dark shade of leather and was wanting an intense colour of orange, I decided to put some of the powder dye from the pot on top of the leather in the basin to try and make it more intense. I had also hoped that the leather would pick up more colour.

14. Leave to soak for one hour.

15. Rinse the leather with cold water until it runs clear.

16. Allow the leather to dry but do not expose it to direct heat which may take up to two days depending on the thickness of the leather.

17. You now have a different colour of leather (will post up my results soon, forgot to take an image showing before and after)

Hollow Cylinder Instructable

This is a brief instructable on making a two part hollow cylinder from a waste pipe. I tested this method out for the handle part of my project and was recommended that this technique would produce the same results as turning and milling a piece of material would but in less time. I needed the tube to be hollow so that I can fit electronics inside and so it can be fixed to other parts. I also wanted it to be made in a way that will allow me to take it apart easily if any electronics start to malfunction inside.

So the first step is to acquire a piece of tubing that is similar to your required diameter. I used a 36mm diameter waste tube which was the only part available which was close to the 40mm diameter that I required.

^^ Next is to drill two small holes through one side of the tube which will be fixed to a scrap piece of metal through the use of screws. Make sure the holes are in line with each other.

^^ Then find a FLAT piece of scrap wood which is the same length or longer than your tube. Drill two holes in this which are in the same place as the holes in the tube.

^^ Screw two screws through the holes which you have created making sure that they go no more than half way through the tube. This will cause a problem when cutting the piece in half as it will come in the way of the blade.

^^ You should now have a tube attached to the flat piece of wood. This will make it easier to keep the part steady to pass through the band saw for cutting the tube in half.

^^ Next stage after this is to mark out precisely where the middle of the tube is. Make sure this is marked out clearly along both lengths of the tube and is clearly visible. Then mark the guage on the bandsaw which will allow the wood and tube to pass through the blade slightly to the left of the half way line that you have marked out. This makes sure that the other half of the tube is precisely cut down the middle. The screwed part isn't required, other than for scraps and test pieces. Also cut the tube to the correct length ensuring that you make two of these. It is recommeded to make these a couple of mm larger than the required dimensions.

^^ There will be a lot of residue material on the edges of the tube. Take a sharp scalpel and run this across the edges to remove this.

^^ The edge will be easier to work with when the residue is removed and can be sanded further if neccesery but you don't want to remove too much as this will leave an oval shape when the two halfs are fixed together.

^^ Tape both halfs together so that they can be sanded at the smae time which will allow you to make them the both length without too much effort.

^^ Sand both of ends of the tubes on the circular sander, again remembering not to take too much off as you may go further than your required length.

^^ Using the scrap material from the unwanted half of the tube, cut two strips slightly smaller than the required length of the tube. Sand any rough edges. These parts will act as the lip on one half of the tube to make it easier to join the two halfs together when finished.

^^ Using solvent cement, smear a light layer of this over the strip of tubing and then stick this to the inside of one half of the tube leaving an overhang of about a centimetre. Hold this firmly for 20-30 seconds to ensure that it's going to stick and then place the part into a vice to ensure the two parts want to stay together. Don't tighten the vice too much as this will start to bend the tube and begin to alter the shape and properties of it.

^^ While this is drying, you can begin to prepare the styrene. Due to my part needing a groove on one half of the tubing, the styrene will be fixed over the other half of the tube to make it larger which makes the other half smaller when they are fixed together. The styrene which I used was 1mm thick which brought the overall thickness of the cylinder to 37mm.

If you don't need this groove then this can be skiped, otherwise source the correct size of styrene for your part. Measure out the size of styrene that you will require leaving a hangover of a couple mm. Taking a scribing blade, scribe down the marked area on the styrene with a metal ruler. When this had been done, the styrene can be easilt bend over and will snap across this line.

^^ Using the leftover tubing as a mould, heat the styrene piece gently and it will slowly begin to become flexible.

^^ When the styrene begins to soften place it on top of one half of the scrap tubing.

^^ Then place another half of the scrap tubing on top of the styrene.

^^ Press down firmly as the styrene begins to cool and harden again. This process will allow the styrene to fit nicely around the tubing without having to be forced to stick. Repeat this process until you the shape of the styrene as a semi circle without being held in place.

^^ Using the solvent cement, stick this to the outside on the half of the tubing that you require. This time don't attempt to place the part in the vice, it makes the styrene begin to peel of on one side. Instead press firmly on this as best as possible across the surface of the styrene. You may need to hold tightly for 2-3 minutes just to make sure the two parts are firmly secured.

^^ With the overhang material, take a sharp scalperl or craft knife and trim close to the edge of the tube. Then, working through various grades of sandpaper, sand the edge down as close to the tube as possible so that the edge is uniform.

^^ Repeat this step for the top edges.

Instructable: Camera Remote

A while back I mentioned how I managed to get my camera to work wirelessly via remote. In this post I will explain the process I went through.

This started off with an instructable which was looking at creataing a wireless detonator (at this point I was looking at popping the balloon via remote)

-To do this you need a remote control car (the one I used is available from Argos for £9.99) to take apart. Starting off, hacking away at the outer casing and removing the electronics inside. At this point the remote doesn't need to be taken apart so this can be set aside for the time being. The motors are then removed from the wheel attachment, these control the direction of the car: forward/back/left/right.

-Desolder the motor wires from the main circuit board and solder on 2 new fresh multicore wires to the circuit board: red and black if available. You will only need one of the motor connections so take note of which one you use. There are notes on the circuit board which tell you what one is which. You will need to know this later on so you know what button on the remote triggers the camera.
-Desolder the battery compartment and obtain a new battery casing. This will make the final piece a little bit tidier. Solder this on again with wires, red positive black negative.

-This leaves the circuit board completed and ready to be connected to the camera.

-For the camera I used a small lightweight spy camera available on eBay.

-First of all remove the small screws on the camera to take the metal casing off. When this is done remove the next white plastic casing. This makes soldering alot easier without burning the plastic.

-Next prepare the wires for attaching to the camera and the circuit board. This can be two different coloured wires to save confusion with lots of black and red wires all over the place. On the end of these wires solder on a crocodile clip. (Because I was making this for a remote detonator, I needed to attach a piece of wire between these crocodile clips, but for this I found it easy to check everything was all working due to being able to remove the circuit from the camera)

-On the camera, desolder the tactile button. The soldering on this is very small and fragile so take extra care with this, I learnt this the hard way!! when this is done, make a bridge on each side of where the button used to be. This creates two connection points instead of the four. Onto these connections solder the two wires on, one on each side. This creates an open connection to where the button used to be. Touching the crocodile clips together triggers the camera and take a photo/starts recording/stops recording and switches it on.

-Now to attach both components together!!

-Clip the crocodile connections onto the wires of the circuit board. There is a correct way round these should be but to find this out you need to test the camera. When this is done, switch on the circuit board and the camera and then you are ready to go. With the remote, remembering which buttons you need to press, test this out to find out if its up or down, left or right which triggers the camera.

-If nothing works you need to swith the crocodile clips around, it should work after this!

-If you want to take the casing off the remote and rearrange this then you can do that. For my project I need to but i'm still working on the new casing.

-Now you have a camera which is triggered wirelessly via a remote so you can capture pictures from a further distance.