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Home 2007
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This website is a log of my hobbies, passions and projects. It will hopefully over time fill up with helpful advice to
encourage, inspire and guide others with similar interests. rab by the way are my initials Robert Andrew Burke
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December
2007:
Well its been twelve months since starting this site and its grown
quite a bit. A few distractions have stopped me doing any work on the
project I hoped to report the most on, my CNC router rebuild. However
some benefits have come from detailing the design procedures I have
used in the form of the Blender Precision Modelling tutorials. This
month I have decided to combine the Web pages into a .pdf book. It
isn't until you bring together all the individual web pages, that you
realize just how much work has been covered this year. The book
consists of 151 pages with 613 images and follows the same walk through
of blenders tools as presented on this site. Only now you can download
it and use the information off line.
The task of combining all this information was made a lot harder when
Word crashed 50 pages into the project and lost the links to 150
images.
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Fortunately
Open Source
software came to the rescue in the form
of Open Office Writer. which has handled the large document size
admirably and also allowed me to convert it to a .pdf within the
program. After
reporting the completion of my home extension and approval by the
Building Inspector in May this year, I have finally received the
Completion Notice. Only eight months to get the paperwork sorted. Had I
been on the project full time I could have built it quicker than it
took the council to organize the papers.
Finally as it's the season of good will and glad tidings I would like
to wish you all Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and look forward
to some new Blender projects in 2008. |
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| November:
The last couple of months have seen me get distracted from my
engineering projects. Quite a lot of time has been spent learning some
more of Blenders texturing methods, with the UV mapped textures being
used to good effect on the Placka image. To paint the texture I used
the Gimphoto build of Gimp, which has allowed me to completely, replace
Paint Shop Pro in my work flow. The best open source programs are now
able to compete head on with professional packages. |
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This
month I have got stuck in to completing the Engineers Guide to Blender.
This final part of the series of tutorials, details how to accurately
position components to build assemblies of parts and uses the geometry
of the component assembly, to construct the casting around them. The
finished component assembly will form the X-axis slides of my router.
Most of the techniques needed to do this have been covered in previous
parts of the guide, so this section forms more of a discussion of the
principals, rather than a step by step tutorial.
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| The
Guide
now contains enough information to get anyone started in the process of
modelling 3D components and assemblies with Blender. I
will keep an eye on the Precision
Modelling - An Engineers Guide
thread on the Blender Artist Forum. If you have any comments or need
things explaining a little clearer post a message on the forum, I tend
to check it every couple of days. If there is enough interest posted on
the forum, I will compile the guide into a .pdf book. |
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| October:
Most of this month has
been spent creating the image below of a typical Placka street corner.
As I mentioned last month, this is a new direction for my CG skills and
has consumed a lot of time learning the basics of texture painting. As
a first time try at something like this, I am really pleased
with
the outcome. There are a few corners that could be knocked off the
image, but when its a new venture it's easy to stumble into pitfalls.
Had I been more experienced,
I wouldn't have created so many sharp corners on the building. However
you learn from your mistakes and the next piece I create will benefit
from my time spent on this. |
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On
the building front, I managed to find time to complete the warm roof
on the back dormer. With the extra insulation added this year, the
comfort levels in the house has increased substantially and I am
expecting a good reduction in the amount of energy needed to keep the
house warm. The dining room also got same treatment with a new warm
roof and high specification roofing felt. There are a few new photos in
the construction projects section. So that's my bit towards
saving the
planet for this year.
(Thanks
Lottie) |
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| September:
This month I have decided to try and push my graphic skills in a new
direction. Until now all of my projects have evolved around detailed
modelling work. Another avenue in 3d graphics is to apply detail using
textures and |
mapping
images onto the
model. These
images are not only used to add colour to the model but
variations
of the image can be used to add subtle bump details, alter the
specularity in different areas of the model and loads of other
parameters that can refine the appearance of the model. All this
started after a meeting in Athens, Greece. I enjoyed the cafe culture
in the Plaka (old town) area of Athens, so I have decided to
try
and recreate a scene from one of the streets. The first building is
about complete. I imagine its going to be a lot of work recreating a
whole street. I have started a thread on Blender Artist's, Work in
Progress section where I will be updating the progress I am making with
this project. Link to it is here Plaka
(Old Town Athens)
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On
this site I have added another image in the gallery, this time the
watch I modelled last month has been added to a display box. I have
also posted some images in my CG
Society
portfolio. I finally felt I had got some images worthy of
posting on this professional site.
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| There
is no engineering work added this month, those projects are on
hold until I have finished the construction work on the back of the
house. I have though added a couple of new photos in the
construction projects section, now I have completed the slating on the
back dormer's. |
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| August:
Its been a busy month for me with a number of work's meetings in London
and Galway Ireland, keeping me away from home. Even so I have
still found time to catch up on building work. The bad summer weather
finally broke and we had a few dry days where I could get stuck in to
ripping the external shingles and boarding off the back Dormer's. The
back walls are now insulated with 100mm of Celotex and fully weather
sealed. It just remains to complete hanging the slates between the
windows. All that remains on the back of the house is to insulate and
re-cover the existing flat roofs. |
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Even
though my time at home has been limited this month it hasn't stopped me
getting stuck into another Blender project. I suppose the inspiration
came from admiring some very expensive Breitling Aviator
watches
whilst on holiday. There is no chance of me ever affording a
£2000.00 watch so I thought I would have a go at modelling
one
instead. It turned out quite well for a quick project. I am
pleased with the modelling, but again struggled with the metal
textures. I might just re-visit this in the winter and see if I can
create a brushed stainless steel finish on the main watch body and
strap? There are a couple of renders of the watch in the gallery. And a
post on Blender
Artist Forum |
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Finally
this
month I have had a concerted push and managed to complete the final
part of the V-Roller Guide tutorial. Because this went over similar
ground to Part 11 of the 608 Bearing tutorial it was difficult not just
to repeat what I had already covered. For this tutorial I have
concentrated on setting up radial dimensions.
The
tutorial
also touches on using Blenders Node Editor to composite the line
drawing, Dimensions and Border together. If you have any
comments on the tutorial please feel free to contact me via the post on
Blenderartist.org: Precision
Modelling
- An Engineers Guide to Blender. |
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July:
I had big hopes this month of finishing off some of the external
building work. The existing house dormers need to be insulated and warm
roofs need fitting over the existing flat roofs. As with all the
best-laid plans, something gets in the way and this month it was the
weather. What's usually the warmest and driest month of the year, has
turned into a "damp squib" with rain almost every day and one of the
days we had the equivalent of three months rain. (Typically British, we
like
talking about the weather. :-P)
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The
weather may have stopped the external work but that's left a bit more
time available to continue work on my Blender Tutorials and CNC
project.
A new tutorial
has been added based around the design of the
V-Rollers that I am planning to make to run along the 18mm steel guides
of my router. The tutorial is in three parts.
The first part takes two of the 608 Bearing's from the first tutorial
and builds the V-Roller around them.
The second constructs the axle, nut and washer that holds the assembly
together. |
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The
third
part gives details of how to generate an accurately detailed thread on
the axle. A few of Blenders modelling tools not covered in the 608
Bearing tutorial have been incorporated into these tutorials. The
techniques used to position the components in relation to one another
will also be useful to anyone using Blender for general Modelling.
The
last
part will be to produce the component and assembly drawings, hopefully
there will be time next month to complete that one. |
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| June:
Firstly, I would like to send out a big thanks to all the people that
posted comments or sent Emails about the bearing tutorial.
When
you start something like this you never know
whether it will be useful to others, but the positive feed back has
been a great boost and I will definitely carry on making tutorials on
the CAD theme. |
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This
month started with a break from writing or technical drawing and I
decided to have a go at modelling a trumpet, I'm quite comfortable with
modelling in blender and it didn't take to long to produce. On the
other hand, obtaining a good golden metallic appearance was a
nightmare. It took about twice as long to achieve a reasonable material
than it
took to construct the model. Textures and materials are something I am
fairly weak at and I am looking forward to reading that section of the
"Essential Blender Book". If you would like to leave any comments about
the trumpet there is a post on Blender
Artist Forum. |
CNC
General Arangement
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The month hasn't been entirely without any technical input. I have
started blocking out the general arrangement for the CNC rebuild. I am
not at the stage to post any details yet, but I do know where I am
going
with the next few tutorials, which will cover my design thoughts along
with some more of the Blender modelling tools not covered in the
Bearing tutorial. |
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May:
This month had a great start with the Building Inspector passing my
extension. Its great when three years of spare time graft come to an
end. The benefits of an extra bedroom, study and bathroom are well
worth the effort.
Because
I
was no longer under pressure to finish any building work, I thought it
would be good to dedicate a little time to finishing my first Blender
tutorial. I think I might have got a little carried away, as it's now
turned from a basic guide on how to constrain extrusions to a set
distance, to a full blown Engineers guide to Blender. With eleven
sections it gives a fairly comprehensive introduction, yet barely
scratches the surface of the tools available to model with. It possibly
gets a little complicated towards the end but hopefully new users will
be able to follow it.
Unfortunately my
Internet providers web space doesn't support forums or guest
books, so I cant answer questions directly from my site.
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| However
if you
are struggling with anything in the tutorial, I have a post on the
Blender Artist Forum in the tutorials section Precision
Modelling
- A 608 Bearing
where I will look in from time to time and try to help. If
you have found the tutorial useful, positive comments in my post in the
finished projects section 608
- Bearing
may encourage others to have a look. |
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April: My
thoughts this month have concentrated on the redesign of my CNC
machine. As I will be using a lot of 608 skateboard bearings,
(I
estimate around 60) because you can obtain them at a reasonable price
from skateboard shops, compared to similar units from bearing factors,
I
decided to start my design with a model of the bearing. This model has
now developed into my first Blender tutorial. Centred around creating
dimensionally accurate models, the tutorial goes through the basics of
setting out the cross section of the bearings inner and outer race and
then extracting the geometry to create the bearing cage etc.
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larger
image in Gallery
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it will be a useful starter for new users of Blender that are
interested in using this package as an engineering tool. Next month
time
permitting, I hope
to be able to continue the tutorial giving details of how to render the
bearing for both visualisation purposes and to produce printable scale
dimensioned drawings. Tutorials
now include an
overview page describing the basics of modelling with precision in
Blender. |
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March:
As 3D
modeling
has been one of
my main interests over the past couple of years, I
decided this month, I should spend a little time creating a gallery
of my images. So in the 3D graphics section, I have posted a
gallery containing a few of the images created whilst learning
to model with Blender. Its early days for me yet with regards to image
creation and as time goes by I intend to learn more about what can be
achieved with blender and upload a succession of improving images. As
mentioned last month my CNC project needs a revamp and I have been
giving some thought to how I can reduce the friction from the original
design, without breaking the bank on linear bearings and ball screws.
Ill post more on this soon. |
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February:
Its
been
a busy month with very little time to spend on the web site. I have
managed to bring over some of the details from my old
sites engineering section and its triggered an idea for a
project
to improve the CNC router, I'll post more on that in the next few
months. The thing thats been taking my time is finishing the home
extension. As a starter for the construction section of the site I
have added a small gallery of the construction work, I need
to
take some more photos and up load them now the internals are finished.
This month I have also improved the navigation links at the bottom of
the pages.
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January
2007:
This is
the start of my
new site, I have just purchased the domain rab3d.com and I am working
on the page layout and navigation. To help get the site populated I
will bring over as much useful stuff from my old pottery site. If you
have just stumbled across the site please be patient, it will probably
be a couple of months before there is a useful amount of information
here.
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All Content © 2007 - 2013 Robert Burke, unless otherwise stated.
Please contact me if you would like to use any of this content.
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