Engineering a Cleanroom Power Tool

This project has come about because of the need to use cordless power tools in a cleanroom. Large numbers of screws and fasteners need to be removed and reinstalled on equipment during preventative maintenance. The proposal is to use power tools to speed up the process and reduce operator fatigue. You might think that a brand new or well maintained power tool would not give off any airborne particles, but that’s not the case. Airborne particulates are a big problem in a cleanroom. They can damage equipment and ruin product.

There’s a huge range of cordless power tools available from all the big-name manufacturers that you know well. Testing some of these tools with a particle meter highlights the problem. Background airborne particle readings are zero, down to 0.1 micron.

When the tools are brought near the meter however, the results are off the scale. This is hardly surprising, given that these tools are not specifically designed to be cleanroom compatible. This particular tool was a reversible ratchet with a brushless motor, so the particles were not carbon dust from the motor brushes. They were more likely from bearings, grease, and the reversible ratchet head.

Having discussed with TOG members, the proposal is to build some kind of enclosure around a tool…. a second skin….. with a connection to a vacuum line. That way, any particulates generated by the tool get drawn away. The tool must still be usable obviously, so the enclosure cannot be so clunky as to make it hard to use. An enclosure or covering that is conformal & flexible rather than rigid might be best. It must not collapse under the suction force. Silicone rubber has been suggested and there are some suggestions around vacuum forming, heat shrinking, 3D printing and silicone molding. If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to drop us a line.    

Lockdown Pinhole Photography

Keeping making during lockdown is important, so time to do some pinhole photography, which we’ve done before at TOG. It’s incredible what you can do with almost nothing….. just a can, a few bits and some photo paper. You can take amazing long exposure photos, like this 3 month long exposure complete with sun tracks.

If you’d like to have a go, we have a limited amount of photo paper available. Get in touch with us and we can post you a sheet.

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Raspberry Pi outdoor Camera

The project is to create an outdoor stop motion camera that can be powered over one cable and we can connect to remotely to monitor building site.

  • Shopping list:
  • Raspberry Pi 3 or 3. I bought Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+
  • MakerHawk Raspberry Pi Camera IR Fisheye Wide-angle 150-160 Degree 5MP OV5647 Webcam Automatically Switching between Day-Vision and Night-Vision Shooing Mode for Raspberry Pi 2B/ 2B+/3B/3B+/4B
  • Active PoE Splitter Adapter Power Over Ethernet 48V to 12V
  • POE switch 48V (already had)
  • 6.2″x3.5″x2.5″(158mmx90mmx64mm) ABS Junction Box Universal Project Enclosure w PC Transparent Cover
  • Nylon Cable Gland with Locknut
  • CAT5 cable (internal or external)
  • AmazonBasics Circular Polarizer Filter – 77 mm

Software we are running on on Pi is Raspberry and the image capture is imgcomp by Matthias-Wandel https://github.com/Matthias-Wandel/imgcomp (very easy and well documented how to setup)

Things left to do:
Mount camera on off stands so camera is closer to camera filter.
Setup backup fo images nightly to google drive (rclone) https://rclone.org/

Polarisation Box

A few weeks ago we ran EalaĆ­n Solas (Light Art) a workshop where visitors got to learn about polarisation and made their own polarisation box. It was a great workshop with lots of good feedback. People loved their little boxes. With Dublin Maker only a few weeks away Jeffrey decided to make a scaled-up version.

The box follows the same design as the one created by the phablabs project. Two polarizer sheets, one being static and the other mounted on a turntable that can spin around. In this model, the turntable comes from a lazy susan. A device used for cake displays.

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