Great job on both the box and the video, Ben. You already helped inspire me to build a programmable box joint jig, and now you've demonstrated a project I pretty much have to do!
Outstanding project! As other folks have commented, great editing too! And, I want to copy that jig! Since you're so detail oriented thought I'd share some hard-won knowledge from my own efforts. Don't take this as anything other than wanting to help a fellow woodworker get even better results from my own failures :) 1. If you can, try to delay removing the glue squeeze out until it's set up some and become rubbery. Much less staining of the wood from the glue, which means you don't have to sand away as much material keeping corners cleaner and flat surfaces flatter! A razor blade as a scraper makes quick work of the rubbery glue remnants. 2. To help fill some of the inevitable raggedness in the joints, there's a finishing trick I've come up with (maybe some others have discovered it too). Instead of spray poly, use a wipe-on hardening oil or an oil-poly mix like a Maloof finish. Sand everything out to around 800 grit and important, don't take a dust cloth to the piece. Then wipe on the finish, which will mix with the residual fine sawdust and fill small gaps. Then, right away hit it with the sander at 800+ grit which really works everything into the microstructure of the grain. Then apply more coats as desired. This technique is the most grain-enhancing I've used, on nice wood it makes the grain practically holographic. 3. Though I mentioned using a sander with fine grits on the finish, try to stay away from it as much as possible early on. You can use peel-and-stick sandpaper that comes in rolls, sticking it to a flat surface like a scrap of MDF or in a pinch your saw top. Then put the piece on the flat sandpaper and, with even pressure on the piece, push back and forth with the grain in a lapping type operation. What this will do for you is keep the flat surfaces flat, so lines like where the top and bottom come together are much more precise and less visible. Again though, very nice work! Let's see some more!
Thank you. I freely admit my "fine woodworking" skills have a long way to go, so I appreciate the shared wisdom; it's what makes the maker community so strong. 👍
I saw your other video and this poped up so I had to watch it. I thought How is this crazy guy going to manually cut these joints. Turns out you are using an arduino. Do you have a video how you made that jig? I think we all would like to see that :) Very impressive and amazing job brother!!!! Thanks for sharing
Nice work Ben, as others have said. I am enjoying building one of these jigs myself but am still at the stage of playing with motors and programming so I have a loooong way to go. I do have a couple of quick questions. 1) You are using a Raspberry Pi (same as me) but I have read that actually an Arduino is better for this type of real-time operation as it doesn't suffer from the delays which come with multi-threading. Have you encountered any problems with missed motor steps using the Raspi? 2) Are you using microstepping? 3) Did you need to use ramping to get to those movement speeds? What was the highest stable stepping rate you could get from your motor with vanilla stepping? I'm in the UK and it is really tough finding a supplier who sells flat-top saw blades which you need for tight joints. Eventually I found some made by CMT which are of a large enough diameter to be used with a sledge jig, in a range of kerf widths, supplied by 3D Tooling at very reasonable prices. They may need to order one in for you but their phone support is absolutely excellent. I bought the 4mm version and it is a very solidly built blade. Here's the link: www.3dtoolingltd.co.uk/product/grooving-saw-blades
Thanks for the comment! 1) Using a Raspberry Pi (or anything with a complex operating system) will have drawbacks. In my case I can't guarantee precise timing of signals to the motor driver. But for my purposes that's fine because the speed of the rotation doesn't really matter. I just have to provide the right number of low/high voltage pulses. I haven't seen any issue with lost steps. The only lost movement I've had has been due to the carriage getting stuck due to wood chips (tear-out) getting stuck in the blade slot, and my motor isn't very strong. The advantage of the Pi and the programming language I chose is that it allowed me to do more complex things like the rich web-based user interface. It was a good trade-off. 2) Yes, I'm using 1/8 micro-stepping... so my 200 step motor takes 1600 pulses on the driver to make one rotation. 3) I'm not using any ramping... just feeding a consistently-timed stream of pulses from my software to the driver. I basically just picked a reasonable speed and haven't seen any issues.
@@BenBrandt22 Thanks for the info. That sounds good on the multithreading - if you can make long box joint runs like the barcode project I can see that missed steps won't be a problem. I've got a Nema 23 motor (which I can't stall by holding the shaft) driving an acme screw with a 4mm pitch, so I am hopeful will be powerful enough. I am amazed at how cheap some of this stuff is on eBay out of China. I've got the motor running at about the same speed as yours using 1/32 stepping and a 1/4 turn ramp up and down for long traverses. I'll ease back on that stepping if I find I'm running out of torque. I love your interface! I enjoy the programming side but, if I am ever going to finish this thing I need to simplify so I've gone for a 20x4 alphnumeric lcd display and will set it using lots of button pushes. Thanks for taking the time to make these videos and share your thoughts. It really helps to see one or two worked examples before you start. I thought this was an original idea of mine (after seeing Matthias' gear--driven version) but it is very hard to have an original thought in these internet-driven days!
That is quite the long game! I remember seeing the video for your programmable box joint jig almost 2 years ago. Have you had any further thoughts on putting together plans for the jig and code?
The code is out there, but the project as a whole needs a lot of work before I'd consider it ready for the public, and there hasn't been much demand, so for now I don't have any big plans for it.
Hello, this is very nice .. I am watching your channel with admiration. It's very common to see you on my channel. We can support each other. thank you.
