Homemade Solar-Powered CNC Engraver

[@espdude8460]

Hey man, just wanted to let you know that you are one of my favorite channels and not much brings me the excitement that seeing you post another video does. I honestly believe you produce some of the most entertaining, educational videos on KZbin, and I really appreciate all the hard work you put in. I've never commented on a KZbin video in all my years of being on the site, but I reckon i had to make an exception today 😊

[@D3rron08]

100 agree with you, he is a genius, the man so innovative!! Top 10 content on KZbin hands down!

[@cranktowncity]

Dude, thank you so much!

[@Zodaz86]

I came here to share my sentiments but you already said it better than I ever could... Thanks for these videos awesome videos Cranktown City!

[@pierrecolin7856]

yep cranktown is the american version of colin furze !

[@kevinaponte7078]

@@cranktowncity I totally agree with him love the content it's great and definitely inspires me to make cool stuff also. keep up the great work looking forward to seeing more videos

[@Hobypyrocom]

"i am not dead guys" judging by how crazy you are and all the projects you build, its a real miracle actually 🤣 great video as always, keep them coming...

[@brandondone2888]

No hot glue . . . well then. Love the idea. Keep doing you, we will be waiting. Your worth it. DINGER!

[@goated_with_the_sauce]

You should slap a fresnel lens on there. You can get them from old TVs and you could probably cut through steel with one. Just food for thought!

[@KieranShort]

I'm an idiot. Even with you setting up the lens.. I'm thinking, where's the laser going to go? Then when you're setting it up outside I'm thinking.. where's the solar panels and battery? Only when I saw the wood burning I thought... Ohhhhhhhhhh. Serves me right for watching just after i got out of bed before I've had my coffee. Great video.

[@Pest789]

One man's crazy sun tracking CNC burnificator is another man's dinger.

[@unusualfabrication9937]

try using a large fresnel lens for MORE POWER!!!

[@vDC2me]

Glad you came back....

[@Hutchy351]

Love your machine. If you have time look into solar surgery. Focusing light into optic fiber.

[@piefadase]

You are one of the few channels out there who can still impress me. The things you make look so chaotic yet they always end up working in some way or another, can't wait to see more! (but take your time)

[@EthanBolli]

Don't worry about upload frequency dude, your videos are definitely worth the wait

[@Cerberus606]

Yes!!! Been looking forward to getting another vid 😁

[@bcs7686]

i will still be here when KZbin is your main job keep up the good work dude your nailing the projects and the production value is great

[@catcam]

You are future KZbin star !!! Thanks for great content and all best from Croatia !

[@tenlittleindians]

Congratulations! Like minds think alike. I posted a description of a solar CNC wood burner on the net over a decade ago. Mine suggested a method to slow down the feed rate when clouds roll by and stop if the burn power got too low. I had also suggested a solar panel to provide power for the machine so it would work off grid in an outdoor art display.

[@thexenaplayz8775]

Bonnie Vance Great job Lucas. Thoroughly intrigued by your inspiration. Unbelievable what your brain comes up with. We need more young people to be inspired by you. By the way remember Cedar Point.

[@Impatient_Ape]

Neat-o, man! If you were wondering how narrow you could get the burn lines, here ya go... Even with a "perfect" convex lens, the diameter of the sun's image in the "hot spot" will be approximately equal to the lens focal length F divided by 107. However, heat spreading will end up giving you an even wider burn trail. (The math : the sun's angular width is approx 0.533 degrees. This is also the angular width of the hot spot image. So the ratio of the hot spot size to the focal length is equal to the tangent of 0.533 degrees, which is approx 1/107)

[@cranktowncity]

Hell yeah I love me some unsolicited math. That is pretty cool man, thanks!

[@sebbes333]

*@Cranktown City* (eg: 13:12) You should add a little metal plate above the wood (an "idle plate"), so when it's done, the machine moves to that plate (eg: [0, 0]) and it can't start a fire. And if you add the plate a bit higher up, then the sun will not focus as much, so it will be even less dangerous then.

[@erikpurne]

Me: "Hey! I've got a cool idea!" (6 months, 500 hours on Fusion360, 25 redesigns, and $1k of McMaster orders later...) "Ah fuck it." This guy: "Hey! I've got a cool idea!" (later that day) "Well there it is. A 4-axis, sun-tracking CNC solar engraver." Me: "Goddammit."

[@customsolutionsinc]

Congrats on the new biz...... what r u doing? I havent found a cid flow that works with my biz either..... enjoy your vids

[@jacovandermerwe1849]

Brilliant concept, you should make the control electronics powered by solar as well

[@herzogsbuick]

i have no idea how it took me till right now to find your channel, nor how you only have 28k subscribers, nor how this video only has 20k views, nor why man continues to choose to wage war, nor how something as simple as an autumn day or fresh snow can calm me like my finest achievements, nor why god chose to make people who don't think fart jokes are funny. but here we are. i'm speechless.

[@electronicscaos]

Working for yourself is hard, I can tell since I'm with my own business for 12 years now... But keep working hard, it'll worth in the long run. Don't let anything put you down.

[@fouzaialaa7962]

this is unexpected !!! i thought you will use a solar panel to power a cnc !! its interesting you can also lose a sun tracking axis since the sun moves in a linear way also an old DSLR lens can do the trick just make sure it can focus up to a single point !!! and it should have an integrated shutter as a bonus

[@bardmadsen6956]

I thought you were going to use the whole hinge of the hood on the truck, as in welding it on the top. The jerking around part had me burst out in laughter along with the ant part! I have a 14' aluminum satellite dish, your giving me ideas. Solar Plasma ! Probably cut itself down like the NIST grant rejection letter, they actually told me I had to have multiple redundancy prime movers for dual axis tracking because if it stopped tracking it would burn itself to the ground!

[@petithor]

i can't believe this channel hasnt got 1m subs srsly its so good

[@gonun69]

Big ass fresnell lens from an old TV to gather a lot of light and a smaller convex lens to focus and make the beam a little more parallel again. Then use one of those window shutters to control how much light goes in and you got a pretty sick CNC burning setup.

[@fb___4255]

Glad to hear that you started your own business, the quality of the content you post here is always growing so even if the frequency is not the same I'm okay with it. Good luck man!

[@cranktowncity]

thank you!

[@among-us-99999]

I love how you use welding like metal hot glue

[@Lukaey]

Dude i bet most of your viewers don't care if your schedule suffers a bit, it's just great that you still put out the most creative stuff on here! Wish you the best with your business!

[@forTodaysAdventure]

mr tryhard with the animations here raising the bar

[@jeffpkamp]

nice. you should try a fresnel lens to speed up burn rate. I got a pack of 4x10 lenses for cheap as free of the internet and they have a pretty sharp focal point if you hold them rigidly. also gives you a larger area to cover with a shade for power modulation.

[@usarms149]

Best. Channel. Ever.

[@carlnelson3893]

The way you are able to conceptualize and put into being, in both hardware and software is impressive. A regular De Vinci, I wonder if he had the great personality too.... lol

[@brandonfranklin4533]

Love your content man, don’t sweat the upload frequency.

[@Kordwar]

Love the videos! My dad worked in a theater when I was a kid and brought a spotlight focusing lens home for my mom to use when she was painting tiny things. I used to use it to cut little green army men in half, something like that might work for a future iteration

[@bowieinc]

Mount on a large rotating cylinder for the ultimate sun powered digital read out sun clock. Would be cool to use solar power to run electronics as well.

[@bowieinc]

Really cool. I am thankful for your inspiring videos what ever their frequency. If you get to the point where you’re doing videos out of obligation as opposed to the joy of creating and sharing, that’s not a road you wanna go down. You are definitely in my top 3 “people I’d like to have with me if I needed to live or escape from a desert island”.

[@rubixmaster5567]

My dad and I watch every video, keep it up!

[@MrThonny15]

very cool idea! Have ben working with CNC/laser for years and never thought of this

[@David-gk2ml]

Instead of a variable shutter, vary the speed of the gantry.

[@cranktowncity]

thank you!

[@P10101G]

Best original idea I have seen in a very long time. Subbed.

[@duncyy7471]

mad lad project. awesome! for part 2, get a fresnel lens. basic a4 size ones are not expensive. should dramatically improve the power. if you want to go bigger, find a old projection tv

[@jordan1081]

Your content is always top tier, and it's not even been that long since your last upload. The videos are always a nice surprise and it's super cool your business is doing great!

[@jdwolk7807]

I love your content man…especially this “DIY SolarPunk” vid, really thought provoking and inspirational! Hope things are going well post-working-for-the-man and looking forward to your next vid (whenever it comes out, no pressure lol)

[@LunaticCharade]

Hey man! You said 1kw, I want that killawatt! Bring on the one square meter lens! I guess you probably want one of those flat ones, fresnel lenses

[@LunaticCharade]

Also, cool! Well done

[@DEADPOOL-ti4cs]

Good luck for your new business.

[@bengelman2600]

This is actually super awesome. I could see people getting into this.

[@shanayneigh]

ayo Luc this is Bryce, insane work!!!! truly living your best life and it’s awesome to see

[@TheRainHarvester]

Use a big screen TV Fresnel lens. A true 1 meter squared power!

[@cranktowncity]

Dude that was my original plan for this, but I couldn't find a projection tv for the life of me. Will definitely try it in the future though.

[@TheRainHarvester]

@@cranktowncity I was thinking of using mine for solar cnc too. But I figured clouds would make spotty cuts. Seasonal variations in solar would make consistent cuts really hard and I need precision. Maybe fiber optic and adjusting speed with measured output could help.

[@TheRainHarvester]

The allure of never burning out a laser tube (by using the sun) is enticing.

[@vysakhak191]

If you are moving forward with the project, you can add a servo-hand-flap-thing under the lens to close it shut after engraving is done to prevent further unwanted scorching( I think you may have already thought about it, if so just ignore me). You may also look into those big Fresnel lens for more powerful beam.

[@JustCuzRobotics]

One of my university's mechanical engineering student senior projects was to do this but they did it the much much harder way by attempting to rotate and move the lens in 6 DOF with a set of linear actuators. This is a much smarter and easier method.

[@digitizer101]

Every single video you publish has been amazing. Please keep them coming as time permits. Cranktown City is my personal favorite channel on KZbin today.

[@jordanbennett6461]

Dude this is sick! Really just a better lense and I think this is good. Also congrats on going solo! You are a probably the most creative person on KZbin. Well worth the waits

[@retrotechjournal]

Hey I love your channel and this was a great build. I was kind of amazed that you manged to get optical sun tracking working without it being too erratic. Amazing. I'm a long time fan. I loved when you doubled down on the metal 3D printing and went Tig. That was quite a build. Anyway. My friend Lawrence and I built a solar plotter like this a while ago, and we did the sun tracking in software. If you have the x axis level, and just use a plumb stick to aim the entire rig at the sun, you can use current time + log/lat to apply incremental offsets to your gcode that compensate for the suns motion! (Won't work well for some 3 hour plot, but for something that only takes 40 mins to plot it works great, and is very simple/easy to set up.) Although you have to estimate gcode temporal position which can also get a bit off on longer plots. Sorry this kzbin.info/www/bejne/in_alnijqd2nqNE is not a good video, but we actually eventually got some very nice output out of that rig. Be warned that trying to go with an iris for variable line width is difficult. I built this iris kzbin.info/www/bejne/jXmzo3p-d8yml6M , and did a bunch of tests but when the iris is too small there's just not enough heat to char wood, so the range of widths was fat->super fat, which wasn't that interesting. You might be able to reduce sfpm or have better optics to get very fine lines but just controlling the magnifying glass "size" with an iris works less well then you'd think, so be warned. Anyway. Keep up the good work! I'm ok with you posting more erraticly. Hell, I only post once or twice a year. lol.

[@cranktowncity]

Dude, that is a super cool way to solve the whole "moving sun" problem. Thanks for the insights on the iris, I'll take that into account. Although after watching your video I may have to make one just because it looks so dang cool!

[@retrotechjournal]

@@cranktowncity Yes, far more things should have motorized irises! I think part of the problem is that wood is just inherently a bit inconsistent so you can't be too close the "enough energy to cause charring" threshold or you get super inconsistent lines. I wrote an Illustrator g-code exporter for that project. I was hoping to then export line widths as z-axis positions to drive the iris, but never got a useful range of widths/results I was happy with. I can totally identify with all the "Oh god! I can't see my laptop screen in the noon day sun. I can't believe I'm using this laptop under a blanket in the full heat of the sun." wackiness that comes when operating a solar plotter. I can't wait to see what you do with it next!

[@Porkchop1999_]

Hello there, Glad to see you back, I don't usually comment (No sense disturbing such a well oiled machine) but I wanted to say Best wishes with the work, All your videos regardless of how crazy the project are always well made and I love to see what you come up with (Reminds me of the crazy stuff I used to attempt when I was still in the workshop) Also Glad to see the hands are still dirty, Hard at work as always I'm going to spout nonsense now but if it helps avoid a painful situation down the line then It's worth me looking stupid A tip from me to you clean off the hands every now and then and treat yourself to a pair of leather gauntlets for working in(This is assuming you don't use them normally when not on camera) The rubber ones aren't worth the landfill but leather is always a go Sheetmetal or welding, Both I and my father before me were set in the ways of gloves = wuss but we both pay the price of constant splitting open skin on the knuckles of each finger, I don't even work on the tools at the moment and I am still suffering with it I hope you find interest in my experience (Or heck even laugh at it I sure am laughing at myself writing this knowing you will have heard this over and over) It might not happen to you and I hope it never does But if my advice keeps you from this constant pain then hell it was worth writing this 10x over Thank you for your time Keep up the amazing work All the best with the business Be safe and Take care out there wherever you are And see you next time whatever cool or crazy thing you do

[@connorglanville1942]

I'll watch you, regardless of frequency. Keep up the great work mate. Much love from Australia 😎👍

[@humanistwriting5477]

That's awesome man. A perfect prototype! Suggestion for mark two with your stated goals. fiber optics as a solar collector would alleviate the number of joints leading to the table both making it easier to get some real big solar power concentrated, allow for smaller simpler shades just disconnect the optic lines, and make the table just many times more rigid

[@brocksterification]

Shit I leave a good ol dinger at the beginning of your vids man. I can't imagine how many of us serial tinkerers are living at least some of our dreams through you! Thank you!!.

[@Hooverdreng]

Very cool. I could honestly see this working very well with a bit of refinement.

[@TLS748]

I look forward to you making stuff so so very much!!!!

[@julias-shed]

Another wonderful machine. Well done 😀 would a lazy Susan kind of setup work for the pan? Might be less wobbly. Thanks for your efforts 😀

[@MattDunlapCO]

So glad I found your channel. Your projects never disappoint and the editing just keeps getting better and better!

[@camdowney1931]

Love the creativity as always man. Happy to hear you are keeping the videos coming. Take the time you need, we’ll still be here. Glad the new role is working out well too!

[@ChadsCustomCreations]

This is freaking epic! Don't stress the upload frequency you do you boo. Good luck on your business venture!

[@bcs7686]

also the only channel i have clicked the bell icon for

[@gustavfranklin]

maybe put a solar concentrator on top of this and get some POWAH?! btw love your channel!

[@yutub561]

We made a mini version of this in my college robotics class (minus the lens and engraver, just the solar tracker) using four steppers, one in each corner of the plate, and aball socket in the center of the plate. The steppers would lift or lower the corners accordingly. You could try something like that for the base with lead screws attached to ball socket joints on each corner and nothing in the middle

[@johnsmith-000]

Great video as always. And good idea, too. No nonsense and unnecessary efforts to make everything clean, straight and tidy, that stuff is best left to sissies, let them make beautiful non-functional machines. Great choice of moving the bed, I'm really pleased you've made no effort to move the Sun LOL. Maybe next time, huh? Keep up the good (and amusing) work! Maybe try fiber in the next model? Much less moving platforms (if it works) and you may be able to use the PTZ camera holder, small and cheap...

[@ivprojects8143]

That came out incredibly well! Definitely looking forward to future versions of this.

[@marvinwilhelm5062]

Thats one of the coolest and most creative projects I have seen for a very long time!

[@FinlayShellard]

Yes! Fantastic video mate 👌 take care of yourself

[@cranktowncity]

Thanks bro!

[@geektoolkit]

how have I not known about this channel....you're video was informative, hilarious, entertaining and innovative. I loved the animation, the interuptions, the engineering involved and all of it. Really well done, subscribed liked, and off to go see more of your stuff.

[@andrewrobotbuilder]

Damn this is cool! Probably a Z-axis and a larger lens could make engraving and cutting possible

[@casual3d809]

Amazing can't wait to see the new updates on this cnc machine

[@diegopicadidot8948]

@Cranktown City I remember seeing online a solar 3D printer a while ago. I think it used a big fresnel lens to melt the sand layer by layer (*found it: Markus Kayser - solar sinter project). Also, what's the delay between repositionings of the tracker? Could it be possible to log the values for a day and average them smoothly? I mean, with such sluggish speed the thing requires (because low energy per minute), it might lose precision during the run due to Earth's rotation. I have a humble suggestion: more power! -inflated mylar concave mirrors, each with its own tracker -a solar tube (roof style) to gather all of them -mirrors and a collimator to put the light where you want it A lens to make a little dot hotter than the sun Same cnc rig Btw I loved every second of your video in all of its 1x glory, awesome.

[@cranktowncity]

That video is frikkin sweet, thanks! good call on the solar tube. I tried doing something similar to this a while ago with lenses and fiber optic cable, but the cable would get too hot. I totally forgot that solar tubes are a thing.

[@diegopicadidot8948]

@@cranktowncity I guess at some point the energy could be enough to fry the components?. Maybe adding some cooling or keeping them in water, maybe lenses made of water themselves? This is some of the best food for the imagination available on KZbin, thanks, man.

[@winstonsmith478]

I thought of doing something like this many years ago to solar etch photographs into hardwood laminates, but the laminates would be wrapped around a drum so the lens would only be required to move on one axis. It would be mounted on an az/el mount to track the sun and a photocell would be used to sense solar brightness to either slow or speed up drum rotation or adjust an iris at the lens which would also be used for burn darkness control. The idea came from seeing one of the land-line telephone image transfer machines on one of the old cop shows.

[@thevide666]

This is some parallel universe shit. ❤❤❤

[@meatpixel256]

A few weeks ago I binge watched all your videos. Discovered you on the CNC MiG 3d printer vid. You've got some great content, looking forward to more.

[@AmirHakimiRezaei]

Awesome idea and pretty great execution by my standards! Take your time, and don't burn out

[@Metalistforlife]

I wonder if you could get pwm functionality on the sunlight intensity by using a cardboard screen that blocks a proportional area of the lens out......

[@theninjascientist689]

This is awesome! I'd love to see a follow-up with your improvement ideas!

[@nefariousyawn]

Congratulations on the business!

[@miriamramstudio3982]

That's a really cool project. Well done 👍

[@ste76539]

Actual genius

[@P3rcival]

The lenses out of a rear projection tv might give you a better focal point, plus the(the ones I acquired) have a little bit of built in fine focus adjustment. And the lenses are proper optical quality, probably the best you'll find at that price point(free!).

[@P3rcival]

And there are 3 of them, so you have options for compounding, maybe.

[@donpalmera]

Good luck on the business. 😃

[@cranktowncity]

thanks!

[@AC-vx3jz]

Love this build, super inspiring. I want to build one!

[@lumotroph]

Damn that's a clever idea. Well done

[@sean9374]

Good luck on your business venture. Hope you still find time for these awesome projects.

[@FredrickDahmer]

Thanks for all of your hard work and effort, bud. While I think you should still keep your patreon up, even at the lowest denomination so we can still support you while you figure out scheduling. I can appreciate your honesty in not wanting to feel like we are paying for nothing, but we would all view it as an investment in your long term channel. That being we all know you aren't going anywhere forever, and we aren't either. Consider maybe even keeping a $1to-$5 option on Patreon, so that we can still support an out standing creator who deserves recognition.

[@bowieinc]

Next upgrade, replace X,Y with dozer tracks so it could write a message over a couple weeks that could be seen from space:)

[@CharlesVanNoland]

Shoulda used a lenticular lens - one of those flat plastic lens sheets. Then you could have a big fat solar collector to focus more sun down to a hot burning dot. I think rigidity isn't super important, but more so the sun-tracking itself. You can't have the tracking going while it's cutting with it being so jerky, it needs to be smoothly tracking the sun. The photoresistors should be super close to the vanes of the thing and the MCU should be sorta just slowly averaging/weighting the measured intensity and gradually actuating accordingly. It looks like the way it is, or was during recording of the video, that it would just screw up a "cut" if it tracked the sun while in the middle of burning something. You want it to track the sun super duper smooth, constantly, so that you can be burning a design and have it come out perfect. Regardless, pretty super dope man!

[@davidbeer]

Glad you're working for yourself is going good☺ really like your informative style.

[@ckbne]

Love the vids mate. Appreciate your time to make them.

[@Four-sc6gj]

Incredible dude.

[@cnczone1]

UNIQUE CONCEPT VERY NICE

[@tommydrake5682]

Dude, don't die, man!

[@shoogie1994]

If you can align the machine with the north celestial pole, youd only need one motor to track the sun. Like a star tracker for astrophotography (google barn door tracker). would make the whole sun following system more rigid and less complex. neat concept tho :)

[@shoogie1994]

also if was polar aligned you can remove the complex sun finder. You could make a finder by having a hole in line a few inches away from a crosshair. line that up and then just drive the the one motor at a fixed speed.

[@fearisan]

man am I glad I found this channel! This video was the entry drug and I just made it to the piezo crystal weed wacker. Love it! Keep up the good work, you got a new patreon!

[@roberthercules3159]

What do you think about possibly adapting your mirror setup from the co2 CNC laser? Use a heliostat to focus sunlight through a large lens (maybe a fresnel sheet/panel), then re-collimate it with a regular convex lense (place PAST the focal-point of the fresnel) onto the first mrror (which will be the last of the 3 optical components that have to be mounted heliostatically) to bounce it across the x/y/z mirrors of a normal co2-laser (style) machine. After that, you'd have all of the movement completed for a very high power (and far more precise/stable) cnc "laser" finished, and if you wanted to do raster & non-cutting moves, either a metal plate on a solenoid, or (to be super-fancy) a piece of liquid-crystal window glass, could be mounted pretty much anywhere NOT at a "focal point" of the beam, to allow some PWM control of the power. Then, you could do rasters & non-burning moves, with the only unsolved problem being how to compensate for clouds passing between your power source (the sun) & your workpiece.