Tag Archives: cnc

Owl project studio

Owl Project's Anthony Hall and Simon Whitemore

While in Manchester I took the opportunity to visit my friends from the Owl Project in their studio round the back of Piccadilly Station. Anthony Hall, Simon Whitemore and Steve Symons have scored a large space split in two sections: one dedicated to (mostly) wood fabrication, with a CNC router and some more traditional cutting tools, the other for brain work, electronics and small scale projects.

The space contains several of Owl Project’s FLOW installation instruments. FLOW was commissioned by Cultural Olympiads fund in 2012, and installed on the Tyne River in Newcastle UK for several months. Mounted on a specially designed floating platform, a water wheel activated several beautifully crafted wood and electronics instruments that analysed water samples and generated sound accordingly.

I also saw a few solar-powered iLogs (if you want to make one, there is an iLog workshop coming soon) and current work on various synths, sequencers and light spectrometers. The Owl project are currently developing new work during a residency in Manchester Museum.

Broken spindle

My old Chinese CNC router was cutting away a piece of plywood to make a housing for a supercapacitor power unit when I heard a crunching noise and a squeak, with smoke. The spindle of the router had finally died, after several months of decline.
Today I received my new spindle, a German one (Kress 1050 FME-1). Fear not stereotype, the German tool is definitely better than the original. It took a bit of twiddling to make it fit, including the 3D printing of a bright orange excentered collet to fit the narrower mount of the new device.
routersI had to lift up the work table by 30mm, which I did with crudely sawn MDF pads, not the job I am the proudest of… The plan is to eventually cut an aluminium plate mount to drop the spindle by 30mm and fit the table back to its original position.

Anyway, by the end of the day I had cut the three parts for my supercap battery housing. tomorrow I am off to Flowering Elbow’s open day near Carmarthen, where maybe it will all come together!