My PolyMorph has morphed!

I now have HydraRaptor controlled by a Python script running on my PC. I decided to test its circle drawing ability in preparation for using it to mill a large hole in the block of material shown in the last post. When I came to refit the pen holder that I made a few weeks ago I noticed it was no longer a good fit. On closer examination it appears to have curled up a bit.



A bit disappointing because I don't like making things twice. Also it doesn't bode well for objects made by FDM, although this was cast rather than extruded.

Double chicken and egg

My spiral saw arrived at the weekend. Although it was dispatched the day after I ordered it, it took another 17 days to get here from Yorkshire. For some reason Business Post could not find the address. Have they never heard of Google maps ?!



Although it was only cheap it does seem to have pretty solid bearings so looks promising for routing. At 600W and revving at 30000 RPM it should rip through most things. I just hope my z-axis motor is strong enough to lift it at 1.6Kg. If it can't then I may have to counter-balance it with a weight and a pulley or else use a bigger motor like this one for example.



I don't have any torque data for it but, at 85mm diameter, it looks beefy.

I plan to make the extruder body by milling this material.



I don't know what it is but it seems very hard and rigid. My best guess is that it is some sort of epoxy type resin with possibly a metallic filler - it has a bit of a sparkle to it. I might be completely wrong though. Anybody know what it is?

The chicken and egg problem is that to make the extruder I need to use the router, but to make the router mountings I could do with using the extruder!

It speaks, but my PC has its fingers in its ears

I almost got UDP working this evening. I wrote a simple Python test script to send a "get status" command to HydraRaptor. Here it is :-

   from socket import *

 # Set the socket parameters
 hydra = "10.0.0.42"
 inPort = 21000
 inAddr = (hydra,inPort)
 outPort = 21001
 outAddr = ("localhost",outPort)
 buf = 1024

 # Create sockets
 sendSock = socket(AF_INET,SOCK_DGRAM)
 recvSock = socket(AF_INET,SOCK_DGRAM)
 recvSock.bind(outAddr)
 recvSock.settimeout(2.0)

 # Send a get status command
 cmd = "\x12\x34\x56\x78\x00"
 if(sendSock.sendto(cmd,inAddr)):
     print "Sending message ....."

 # Receive the reply
 try:
     data,addr = recvSock.recvfrom(buf)
     if data:
         print " Received message '", data, "'"
 except:
     print "Read failed"

 # Close sockets
 recvSock.close()
 sendSock.close()

HydraRaptor replies with its x,y,z coordinates and the number of steps remaining. The reply packet arrives at my PC which then sends an ICMP destination unreachable (port unreachable) message back. I have no idea why. netstat -ad shows :

  UDP    shuttle:21001          *:*                                    2412
[Pythonwin.exe]

Which looks to me to show that the port is being listened to. I have tried turning my firewall off but that made no difference. I am sure the problem is at the PC end because Ethereal shows me that the packets are well formed. I have had enough for this evening. Any Python socket experts out there? I have never done sockets in Python before.