Kinected

Picked up an XBox w/Kinect to play with recently to get in on the 3D hacking.

Unfortunately, didn't read enough first and got the bundle (Slim + Kinect) rather than grabbing them separately, so I didn't end up with the Kinect USB adapter/power supply. Turns out Microsoft doesn't like selling the adapters by themselves.

The Kinect is just a USB device that also needs +12V, so Microsoft put together a proprietary jack for it.   There's an excellent pinout breakdown here, and here's a couple of pics of the receiving end w/o shielding.

Anyone know of a manufacturer selling these jacks and plugs in lots of 100 or so?

So, to avoid playing splice-the-cable on the Kinect itself, I shredded a PDP Kinect extension chord.  Bloody expensive things, although they have quite a few active electronics in them (I'm assuming for USB repeating to stay in spec for a really long cable, although haven't checked the chips yet).

Anywho, here's my hacked adapter for now. Connecting it via a short shielded usb cable to an internal USB A jack on a PCI->USB add-on card, and just using the 12V rail off a drive power plug to power it.

 It ain't pretty, but it works.

Edit: Hah! Now they're in stock solo O.o  Well, saved a few days of waiting.

Meaux Mill improving

Still fighting with bits, feedrates, etc.   But making useful prototype boards with it now.

This was done with a 60 degree .007 engraving bit and a #66 drill bit, 10 ipm feedrate on X/Y and 5ipm on Z (was breaking smaller drill bits going faster - using 1/8" shank drills in a 1/4" chuck with an adapter and there's a bit of slop in it that doesn't show with the 1/4" shank engraving bits), a Dewalt Trim Router (30k rpm or so? haven't measured).

My engraving bits seem to chip/dull pretty fast so far - tried ordering an Amana InGroove from ToolsToday, but they sent the wrong bits and don't respond to emails.  Another day, another distributor :)

Meaux Mill

Been working on my CNC all day.... *almost* to the point where I can cut circuit boards.

Here's the second one I've tried to cut (first one, well.... it just looked painful).

Looks like I still have some shim work to do, and need to do a bit more math on the configuration.

But, is good enough I'm stoked... should be able to get there from here soon enough.

Posted a video of the machine using its steppers to play music.  Had to switch it to half-stepping rather than the 1/8th steps I'm using for the PCBs to get it loud enough ;)   Used a script from here to build the G-Code vectors.