Dongcheng DMR12: What a superb machine

The Dongcheng router or Dong, as I lovingly call it, is quickly becoming my favourite tool to work with wood. (There I put so many innuendos in that first statement, that you should get all the giggling out of your system)
Over the years, I've been very resistant to buying and using power tools. I'm more of the "listen to the sound of the plane, and the snick of a chisel" kind of guy. But there are time when speed is imperative. Getting to the point, I finally relented and bought a power plunge router. I had done all the homework and with a budget of 4K I went off to lohar chawl.
The guy showed me, Bosch and Black and Decker at some earth shattering prices. and then he showed me some dman cheap chinese stuff worth piddle. And then finally after 30 minutes, he goes "upstairs" and gets this big box with Dongcheng on it... saying, "Saab, apko quality, low price mein chaiye, to yahi hai".. "Sir, if you want quality at a low price then this is THE item".
Loved it, bought it, end of story.

Came home unboxed it and Jishnu and I started it up just to listen to the motor. I have to say, the motor may be large and heavy, but it is comparatively silent. 1600W of power to Black and Decker's 1500W and still lovely and silent.

My first impressions
1. Heavy, cannot be controlled with one hand.
2. Starts with a jerk, like an angle grinder.
3. Round base compared to Black and Decker's capsule shaped.
4. Steady and rugged
5. Crappy plastic handles that are to be attached and are loose.

The machine comes with a fairly good documentation... Atleast not worse than Bosch and Black and Decker. But still not good enough to explain what a template guide is, or a flush feature.

This was 2 months back, last week, I had to do a bit of baby sitting, so I decided to complete a planter that a good friend wanted and with the router only. After using it for 2 days I am convinced that it is an amazing piece of design. Lets begin...

1. An On Off switch. No painful continuous pressing of a trigger or fiddling with a trigger lock, Simple On Off which can be very simply flicked with the thumb. Plus one for simplicity and ease of use.

2. A round base, A round base will follow a straight guide as easily as a straight one, but all of us know that sometime in that one nano second of distraction (that's the other name for my son), the straight edge of the router goes ever so slightly slanting... damn. No problem here. the router rotates and stays in contact with the straight edge, and being a circle the bit stays on the straight line.

3. Double depth stops: Or if you prefer a depth stop and a "jump" stop. One of the things I hate most about the Black and Decker that I've been using is, when you undo the knob holding the router at a particular height, the body jumps up and you loose the zero set. Then you have to fight with the darned thing to get it back down and generally wrestle yourself to the next depth position. With the double depth, I simply set the zero (while wrestling) and then bring the "jump stop" to that position. I can then release the knob of the plunge and actually use the plunge action in the range of depth of cut that I'm making. I love this feature. I've seen it on the dremel pluge router attachment too.

4. Micro adjustment of the straight edge guide. If you've used a straight edge, you'll know how frustrating it is to adjust the straight edge guide. Normally the 2 arms of the guide, slip into holes in the side of the base. These are then locked down with screws. Now the fun begins when you are an mm short (or long), you have to open the screws, generally 3. adjust the guide an mm(which never happens) and then tighten the screws. Repeat about a million times till you get it right. On the Dong however, its a breeze, they've got this little extra screw with a groove, into which a part of the guide fits. By tightening or loosening this screw, the guide can be adjust that last mm with no difficulty. In addition to adjusting to get on the right line, I use this feature to make the adjustment to route slots that are larger.

All is not hunky dory though,
1. Plastic handles: these are really wobbly things, they don't get in the way while working, but its still a very poor feature.
2. I would have liked the nut to be hexagonal, instead of square. Loosening and tightening operations would have been a lot easier. Its not a deal breaker, but it is painful.
3. The weight of the machine, this works both in its favour and against it. I use the weight to my advantage and allow Jishnu (7 years old) to actually drive the router, while i just keep a hand close by.

All in all, if you are looking for a plunge router, The dongcheng is a good, moderately priced alternative to the Bosch or Black and Decker.

Desktop mobile camera stand: From Draft to final product

"People make prototypes at the asylum." This is a statement I have made a huge number of times. So far I have not been one of those people. So far I've always built to a plan or from scrap found around the place, but never have I built with a specific need and set of functions. Here's how I learnt exactly how important a space like the Makers Asylum is.

Last month I started a build, a very good friend wanted a camera stand. A desk mounted mobile camera stand for taking videos of stuff being done on the desk. Those were the requirements and the specs. Oh and of course the camera should be able to take a video of an area of 3 feet by 2 feet.
I started working on this immediately. It seemed easy enough, right from the beginning there were decisions to be made. Various designs regarding the stand came up.
Should I have 4 legs coming in from the corners.
Should I have 2 legs coming in from the sides
or maybe on leg which would hover over the area.
Should the design allow for the camera to be lowered and raised. or cover a variable area.
Should the legs arc over the space, or be at an angle.
After about a week of discussing with "the customer" and then with various friends I decided on have one leg, with one vertical element and one horizontal elements like a crane with a boom. The boom would hold the camera obviously.
The angle of the boom would be adjustable and also the angle of the vertical. This would allow the high of the camera to be adjusted and also the distance from the camera to the base of the stand which would determine how large an area could be left unobstructed.
Taking all this into account I decided on a simple design and an all wood construction(Ofcourse).
Here is the final outcome.

All of this wood was available in the scrap piles at the asylum. This is another cool thing about the makers asylum. I only wish we could make the space dedicated to "scrap"" bigger.
Anywho, cutting this wood to size on the makeshift table saw was a snap. The 3 pieces required were ready in 10 minutes. A bit of easy planing and I fell in love with recycled pine all over again. Pine has such a lovely, open look about it, the contrast between the dark and light is awesome.

Glue up and testing the fit of the pieces done. I went over to the drill press. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, that was quick. I put the whole thing together, pushed in and tightened the nut-bolts and was overjoyed. I was done. 4 hours of pysudo work and I was done.
LOL, I wish, The reach of the stand was impressive, but the entire stand would simply tip over with its own weight. Here I got 2 suggestions from innocent bystanders.
1. Use a counter weight on the base. (I found after a few trials that a 2Kg counterweight would be required in a very small space)
2. Use a clamp. I would never have thought of this. It was the only viable solution

3. Much much later I was also given the idea of using a suction cup.

The next problem I faced was how to mount the phone to the stand
1. Make a tray from acrylic
2. make a structure from wood
3. buy a selfie stick and scavenge the holder. This was the most realistic and worked on many levels. 100 bucks and I was in business.

After attaching the holder, ( I did some nifty finger joint stuff into endgrain, looks really good), I found to my dismay tat however much I tighten the nut bolts (there are 2 joints) the friction between the 2 sections of wood was just not enough and the stand would simply fold up. Again the community at the asylum came to the rescue.
1. Use sand paper between the joints to in crease friction. (This did not help, in hind side, perhaps the grit was too low, I used 120 grit)
2. Attach semi circles with holes to one of the members and then simply push a pin through. This took some work. I asked one of the space managers to etch out the semi circles and quarter circles on the piece of wood I had decided on and then using the newly acquired Bosch jigsaw I cut out the pieces.
A tiny bit of work on the belt sander, someone brought in and the pieces were smooth. These were 2 small for the plane.
I marked out the semi circle and drilled the holes on the drill press.

Glue up and a single coat of varnish and I was done.
This time I was done.

As far as I could figure, It took me 4 iterations to get to this point.
This is the finished stand.

Now after the "customer" used the stand I got some really interesting feedback.
1. The height of the phone above the desk is such that he has to climb on a chair to put on the camera.
2. Any slight bump on the table sets off vibrations in the stand which obviously ruin the video.

Clearly product design is not easy. It requires a number of cycles to get right. This is where a place like the Makers Asylum excels. For a montly membership, I was able to get a host of design ideas when I was in trouble and also to run 4 cycles of design iterations to come to a final product that could be field tested.

Finally a miniature

Finally a miniature.
Months have gone by
Years too
Infact, its a decade since
I made something 
as small as you.

Sheesh, a terrible verse, I know. But it just came out.
I'm sitting here, looking at a miniature chair that I made a few Sundays back at the asylum; I can't help smiling.
When I was a teen, I would try to cut up plywood and make scale models of my grandmothers furniture. They were fairly good, but I never liked the fact that the ends were always a little off and the flat was not perfectly flat. In time, when I got married and began making full scale furniture, I got did develop that skill. But I never went back to the little scale.
Always meaning to but never quite making it.
Then the Asylum happened and I felt sure I could make something there, but here too, 2 years, 2 busy years went by and I still hadn't gone back to where my heart wanted to take me.
And then the serendipitous  happened. Someone made a make-shift table saw at the asylum.
I had a wood working class on at the time and couldn't allow my excitement to get the better of me. So the weekend after the class ended, I found a length of pine and had at it.
The Adirondack seemed the perfect design to bring to life.
It is made up of many lengths of wide flat boards, so I wouldn't have  to get my finger to close to that blade.
After looking at a few images, I began with a basic sketch and some measurements.
I found that the design doesn't have as few complications as I first thought, there were atleast 9 different types of pieces to cut.
Ofcourse with a blade ready to spin and a guide with a stop, that's wasn't a problem. I was absorbed.
4 hours later covered with sawdust, I appeared out of the wood lab, looking for glue. That must have been a sight.
There I was excitedly asking for fevicol, covered in sawdust and holding what was in effect a lot of little popsicle sticks.

Anyway, glue in hand, I vanished back into the lab where I got good and sticky.
And finally

Wood working 101: Seventh Batch and a shock

Finally its time for the seventh batch of basic woodworking at the makers asylum. I'm super excited and just a tad bit nervous. I'm always nervous before a session begins; 10 varied personalities in one room and I'm trying to teach them. The first meeting is about getting to know them. Once that is done in the first 10 minutes, then I'm fine again.

Session 1

The group of ten who came out, late on a Saturday morning is varied indeed, architects, interior designers, hobbyists like me. And this time there is a doctor in the house; reliving the days when she had to saw open a persons rib cage (ouch).
Any who, as is the norm, this class too has some super excited people. The first day surprised me, play time normally ends will the participants cutting up half lap joints and sort of, just about fitting them into each other, some go as far as making some basic carvings or curves, etc.
This time, nearly all of them, finished their joints early and then began making random shit. It was wonderful to watch.

 


One made a kontiki style raft. or maybe a viking raft (LOL). Another makes a sort of ballista.
An architect student even made a large part of a studio apartment.
At 5, few wanted to leave and I was forced to hustle them out of the space, so I could have my way with the newly mounted table saw. (Reverse mounted circular saw), but that's a story for another time.
Coby and I went on to remove the "push" handle from the woodworking lab, because it pissed us of.
What we cannot believe is what we did with it. We mounted it into a column in the center of the room. Then, because we mounted it too high, we made a 6 inch high step. And then put beading "pati" around the column to frame the "door". 30 minutes flat, it amazed me. I cant believe that a year ago I was afraid of the circular saw and today I was free handing with it.

Session 2

Tired, oh so tired. What a session, what a set of people. 5 of them have finished the top frame, 3 are waiting to glue up next session.

Today, I covered joints, simply because the first session proved that this latest set needed a challenge.

And a good thing I did too, cos they gobbled it up and immediately changed  the basic laptop design. This design uses mainly half lap joints at the end of the pieces and has not supporting wood. So a mistake, generally proves fatal. Of course the joint is also one of the easiest to create with the level of knowledge.

Some of this group used half lap joints one inch from the ends, which means that the frame design looks really elegant.

The doctor used mortise and tenon joints. Imagine digging out a mortise in 1cm by 2cm wood. Crazy, But she did it.

They finally left at 6, except for one. She was hanging about looking torn. I know the feeling. I would do the same when I did the electronic workshop. I never wanted to leave too. So I roped her into building a sled for the "table saw" which we built yesterday.

End of Weekend

Weekends pass very quickly when I have a workshop, this one has been no different. I'm tired, fatigued and the thought of going to work tomorrow makes me even more tired. 

But the show must go on.

Bio hacking: a new track; in need of friends

Weeks back, I attended the first meetup of the bio hacking "group", read about building a bio reator

In the title I say "a new track"; meaning a new micro community or 'ability' at the asylum. A new possibility...; we have a few tracks going at the asylum, the 3D printing, the laser cutting, electronics, woodworking and most people dabble in at least 2 of them at a time. But a bio hacking track will be something completely different, it will be the future and that's why I'm so excited.

If you read the article linked above you can see that the bio reactor is the first build and seemingly the most important.
From an advertising point of view it says, that we at the asylum have started this track so come on people and join the future.
From the micro community (track) point of view, it means the Asylum has the ability to grow your s***, so come on and use it to do your experiments.
But the truth, the sad unhappy truth is that, as excited as I am about this, I cannot make this project on my own and currently there seems to be just me and Jesal. Both part timers at the asylum. Both of us are too busy to do this on our own. The build is an extremely simple one.
1. Come up with a basic structure on which tubes can be draped and an algae, water mix can be exposed to sunlight
2. Have a reservoir in place to store the algae, water mix.
3. Create an agitator to keep the mix in the reservoir in motion.
4. CO2 bubbler, CO2 is important to plants as an input material, so air pumping into the reservoir.
5. A timing mechanism to open and shut valves to move the mix in and out of the tubes regularly.

Except for the timing mech, I can do everything else in a week. But when? which week?
And thats why the bio hacking track is in need of friends. A few more people to collect materials, to build intermediate things, like the agitator for example, or the timing mechanism.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

For the last 2 weeks I've been working on the frame of a magic mirror. The uses of a magic mirror as you know from Snow White's step mother are numerous. You can use one to assuage your ego, you can use one to locate a person, you can even look into the future and if Shrek is to be believed you can even find your true love.
I'm sure our magic mirror can do all that and more.
The first thing to do was collecting the materials

1. Wood for the frame
2. Wood to support the innards and to keep them away from the wall.
3. A one way mirror
4. A display
5. A raspberry pi
6. All the cords and connectors
7. An sd card for the pi software
8. A wireless dongle

The display we had lying around... actually we had appropriated the display for the MAME cabinet which was never completed for the most stupid reason, painting!!! grrr.
The other stuff we simply purchased. Easy enough.
R was eager to get the entire thing done in a week, but I wanted to make a frame, a proper solid wooden frame. I have been terrified of making one for the last 7 years and I finally decided to bite the bullet. This time I would use the circular saw for a straight accurate cut and the router for a nice rebate around the edges to fit the mirror and display into. It would be easy.

R went of at the end of day 1 to load the software onto the SD card and get the electronics elements sorted out. While I began building the frame.

The wood I had selected is a piece of 7 foot long 3 inch wide, 4 year old burma teak with a beautiful parallel grain; perfect for using for a frame. I quickly smoothed it with a hand plane, which is by far my favourite hand tool. My most fervent wish is that I hand more hand planes... but space...

Anyway, I got down to rebating. Here is where I made my first mistake. I had decided on using the mitre joint and I thought it would be easier to just rebate the whole length before cutting out the mitred sides. instead of rebating 4 separate pieces. Well turns out that when you cut at 45 degrees, you cannot use the complementary piece as is, since now the rebate is on the long side. duh!
Anyway lesson learnt

Now if any of you think that using power makes work more accurate, perish the thought, it simply doesn't. My 45 degrees was 47 or 44, NEVER 45. I had to go back to the hand plane and plane down to 45 which felt really nice, but sort of beat the whole purpose of using the power tools.

This was the longest, most painful portion of the build. just putting together the frame, and then I discovered that I had made to narrow a rebate. So I then rebated 4 individual pieces, which I was trying to avoid in the first place and ... ok fine... lesson learnt.

R and I then got together and dry ran everything. Here is when we noticed that the adapter for the display to Pi connection stood a good 5 inches proud of the display. That was crazy, a magic mirror that had 6 inches of space behind it is just strange.
To add to our troubles the Pi required on connector, and the display required another, 2 lines running out of the mirror would be strange. One is strange enough, but 2 is too noticeable.
Anyway, that was R's problem. He had to bring that 5 inches down to 2 and 3/4th.
I went on to build up the 3 inch backing onto which to attach the innards of the magic mirror. A simple set of 2 vertical and 2 horizontal members would suffice. With my new friend the router we made 1/2 inch grooves in the members and fit and screwed in the whole thing.
2 more screws attach the backing to the frame.

All that is left now is to 3D print the Pi case, attach a 2 socket power stick to the back and plug in the pi and the display. R has to find a decent DVI to HDMI cable which will fit in the 2 inches of space available behind the mirror.

The build itself has been easy but its been an eye opener.
1. Power tools are not the answer for accuracy. Care is
2. An unplanned build takes longer than a planned one. This can be restated as sometimes it is better to simply purchase the correct sections of wood, instead of going through the scrap and then changing the design accordingly.

Wood working 101: Class number 5

The article I had planned to write on how to setup a semi permanent table saw style guide and stop for a circular saw has taken a sort of a back seat. So has the actual build.

My focus has been distributed as usual between, the magic mirror, the kneeling chair, the basic woodworking classes, a visit to a sawmill and a photo bio reactor. That's a lot... not ofcourse to mention work. I manage to fit that too into my busy schedule.

Today I'll simply talk about my last "basic woodworking" class. As usual before the first session I was nervous as hell. It always happens, even though this was my 5th class. Maybe its the anticipation that I'm misconstruing as nervousness. Whichever it is though, the butterflies roost 3 minutes after the first good morning.

For this class I started something new. Instead of giving them a task upfront, like I did in the previous classes, I simply allowed these guys to play with the wood. They went at it with chisel, saw and plane. My three favourite tools and in my opinion all you need for woodworking.
By 3pm, most except for 2 were tired of the unfocussed play, to them I gave the task of making mallets. I also had a special task in mind, making a sanding block. Without fail, this kept them busy till 7, which far exceeds the 5:30pm limit.

Watching a group of people eagerly discovering wood is always great fun, the joy of being able to stand in the middle of the lab and pick out the one person who is making the saw sing, by sound alone can never be equaled.


The class went through in the usual format
Day 1: Introduction and wood play

Day 2: Session on wood, structure and strength

Day 3: Hand tools: what they do and how to use them 

Day 4: Finishing

This time only 3 finished their laptops, which was odd since they were working non stop. Maybe it was all the jokes and banter. hahaha

Rip cutting guide setup for power saw

Last week, at the asylum I configured, nay, setup a table saw guide for a circular saw. More correctly it was a rip cutting guide for a power saw. A width stop crossed with a power saw cutting guide. If you are like me then, you don't like words and explanations; why words when an image would suffice. So here's the image of the setup.

Problem Statement

I'll lead you through the problems I faced and the consequent solutions.
First; an 8x4 sheet of 12mm ply (useless ply this is, need to find a better source) has to be cut up into 17 strips of 2 1/2 inch width.

With a table saw, 

1. Set the width guide to 2 1/2 inches 
2. Rip through the sheet.
3. Remove the recently cut strip. butt the sheet to guide and repeat steps 2 and 3. 

Steps 2 and 3 would be repeated 17 times

Now with the darling power saw

1. Measure 2 1/2 and draw line with straight edge.
2. Measure 1 1/2" from that line, draw another line.
3. Clamp the straight edge to the sheet at the second line. 2 clamps, so walk around the table
4. Clamp the entire sheet to the table. (Stability!!)
5. Rip through the sheet with sole pushed up against cutting guide set in 3.
6. Unclamp the guide. (going around the table again)
7. Unclamp the sheet.
8. Move sheet carefully so that the cut will be over the channel, but not too far otherwise we lose stability.

Repeat steps 1 through 8 17 times.
After the first cut, I optimized the measuring to simple do a 4 inch line for the guide.
Clearly the entire  task was going to be extremely tedious and inaccurate. Inaccurate since each time a measurement is done, you introduce a tiny error. Further, placing and clamping the guide to a line is always inaccurate. So differences of up to 2mm can be introduced in the width of the strips.
I'm a lazy ass, I'm really not going to spend an entire day ripping 17 strips. So...

Solution

Setting up the width stop

On the far side of the cutting channel I clamped down one length of ply. The placement was such that it was about 2 inches from the near edge of the cutting channel. This means that the 2 1/2" cut would always be over the cutting channel. 1/2" into the cutting channel to be precise.
Great, now I didn't have to keep pulling and pushing the sheet and trying to line it up so that I wont cut into the table. I would simple butt the sheet up to this "stop" and I would know I'm safe. It is best if the stop is the same size as the material so that the cutting guide can be setup on top of the stop.

Setting up the cutting guide

The cutting guide can be setup on either side of the cut. Now in this case the stop was on the left so I would setup my guide on the left of the cut. Setting it up on the right would mean that I would have to clamp to the material being cut, which is exactly what causes the problems in the first place. as I've described above.

So the stop is 12mm and I placed the cutting guide atop this in a such a way that it was exactly 4 1/2" from the cutting line. (the sole of the power saw is large on one side. in my case it is 4 1/2" and 1 1/2"). 

Having clamped that, I was ready for repeated cuts with precision. 

Conclusion

In this case I'd made the thickness or width of the width stop such that I could easily mount the cutting guide onto it. The guide was clamped to the stop to make it a single piece. The single piece was then secured separately to the table. If you do the math, the cutting guide would be placed exactly 2" away from the edge of the width stop.

Limitations

While this setup allowed me to quickly and easily cut the 17 strips of plywood that I needed, it has the following limitations

1. The width stop has to be the same size as the material being cut since the sole of the saw rests on the material. 
2. The point above also effectively means that for each material of different height, the width stop has to be changed. Material thickness ranges from 3mm mdf to 2 inch thick teak.
3. You will have noticed that if I need a 4" width, I would move the cutting guide to 1/2" from the edge of the stop. Ofcourse if want a width greater than 4 1/2" then I stuck. Or maybe I could have the cutting guide overhang the stop.

In a little bit I will talk about the setup for a cross cutting (cross cutting on ply??) guide for the power saw.