They are playing this one now in Spain. And it seems that youtube has not a problem with you posting an ad even if your do not hold the copyrights of that ad. I guess this is what ads are for. Anyway, I think it is a funny ad.
Variable Frequency Drives ( VFD ) allow the control of spindles so speed can accurately be controlled and a detailed acceleration profile for the spindle and reverse rotation can all be handled. In essence a VFD is an three phase inverter for three-phase AC motor. I am using a popular (I mean cheap) Chinese VFD and though the reference manual is not great, I could see there is a built-in RS-485 port. I usually control the start, stop and speed selection using the keyboard on the unit but I thought it will be more useful if I could control everything from the same Arduino is doing our CNC table control. Some cheap RS-485 off eBay and some lines of code later, I can start, stop and change the speed from an Arduino. What a cool thing to have! Some configuration of your VFD are needed before you can use it like that. You need to set PD163=1 (I am using address 1 in the code). PD=164=1 (for setting serial to 9600bps) and PD165=0 (for using ASCII and 8N1 character for...
After using Onshape CAD software for a while I am really fond of it. So one natural thing to do, specially once they have released the Instructor's kit is to start using it in the classroom too. But one thing I was not so sure how to do was to use old designs I made using OpenSCAD. It does not mean I am completely quitting using OpenSCAD but suddenly I can see I can do assemblies in Onshape that will look quite nice for showing and documentation purposes if only I could easily import from OpenSCAD. I am glad to report that the route OpenSCAD --> FreeCAD --> Onshape worked brilliantly. Even more when a few tricks were applied. While some people suggest to import CSG files from OpenSCAD to FreeCAD, I have had more success by directly importing SCAD files into FreeCAD. One trick that worked well for me was to get rid of $fn references, so now circles become real circles (or cylinders) in FreeCAD. If a part keeps some $fn references then your cylinders or circles wi...
I recently saw the cool mood lamp by Philips and I liked it. What I did not like was the price. I set myself to discover what the industry has to offer in terms of high-power LEDs. It turns out that since the old 20mA red LEDs the market has evolved in such a way that it seems the light appliances of the future might be completely LED-powered. Now there are 3W and 10W LEDs available. Either monochrome or RGB. I like LEDs as they last forever (I've never seen a LED that stopped working unless it was due to a current overload). High power LEDs are not cheap but they are very easy to control from a micro-controller using PWM (Pulse Width Modulation). They need DC low voltage power sources. I did a test with an Arduino board and a protoboard with a ULN2003 that I've used to control a 3W RGB LED . I programmed a never ending random sequence and this is the source code . Just connect each led (R,G,B) to the outputs 9,10 and 11 of the Arduino. If you need more current then use a Darl...
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