During the last quarterly Z rebuild I somehow misplaced what suckit it calls the Thumbscrew
I sent her email but she is not real fast and not terribly reliable in my experience.
Any ideas for a substitute part to get me back in operation?
Looks to be an SHCS with a plastic knob on the end.
You should be able to find something similar at a hardware store — the thread and its length and the bolt having an appropriate OAL are most important of course — lots of manufacturers and styles:
If you have access to a 3D printer or if it allows for milling:
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cut wood knob on cnc with inset for bex head bolt with tight fit.
I get a quick response from those folks on social, particularly instagram, fwiw.
take the good bolt with knob down to home depot and find a matching one for the time being.
just need to know imperial/metric, diameter and pitch. they have those little checkers down the aisle.
you’ll need a wrench to adjust, but it’s a cheap and easy temp solution till they get back and you get a matching set.
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Can pretty much guarantee you’ll find one here: https://www.mcmaster.com
Start here: https://www.mcmaster.com/knobs
then use the selector on the left side. If it’s a standard part (it is) you’ll find it. Cheap. Expensive. Even More expensive…you name it, it’s there.
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I have ordered the OOPS clamps from suckit and it took a long time to get. I wanted a suckit dust boot but they were not taking orders. I gave up on them and bought a clone from someone on etsy.com. After using the suckit design for a while I went back to the router mounted design because it is easier to change bits and zero. The suckit design you are constantly moving the two support arms up and down to get them out of the way for bit changes. With the router mounted dust boot I simply remove the magnet mounted dust skirt and I can change the bit and zero. The suckit products are good but they are a small company that seems to in over their head in the production department. But for me I have given up on them and moved on to other products. FYI the dust collection was just as good with the router mounted solution as with the suckit design.
The McMaster and Carr outfit has everything, is reasonable in price and if you use Fusion 360 their database of parts is built in.
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Well I don’t know why you are saying this about the SuckIt. You do not need to fiddle with the arms to change the router bit, you just pull the boot out, it is mounted with magnets and you have access to the spindle to change the bits. I do it all the time.
The problem with the router mounted dust boots is that the boot does not stay just above the work piece so the suction is not constant.
As for the parts, they are M5-20 cap screws with a little 3D printed knob glued to it but in fact you could make one on the Shapeoko made of aluminum which is good practice. A quick search on Thingiverse provided me with dozens of knobs some parametric that you can modify yourself. You can get M5-20 cap screws and just use an Allen key to tighten it which is a very minor issue.
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I’ve been using PwnCNC’s clamps for a while and see they now have a CNCjs controller and a camera bracket.
man, not to criticize pwnCNC or tell anyone how to run their hobbyist business, but I really think it would be good form to share your part files open source style if you are going to sell other’s work (like that $99 cncjs bundle).
(unrelated: the suckit folks make things available - I printed out their hose holder on thingaverse).
Still considering the value of open sourcing the models but haven’t reached a decision yet.
I have reached out to Cheton and he is supportive of the product. There is also a similarity of the Pi case to others available, however it is a clean model with major differences so it works nicely with this specific use-case. The Pi can be mounted to the bracket in any orientation that suites the end-users needs. The bracket even has extra holes in case you want to mount it to the side of your CNC’s enclosure instead of directly onto your Shapeoko.
The biggest advantage of this controller OOB is that it comes pre-installed with CNCjs along with MJPG-Streamer for an attached USB webcam.
Weighed the options and decided publishing the STL’s was the right thing to do to help the community grow.
http://www.thingiverse.com/DansMakerShop/designs
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