Microset Timer interface using Fusion 360 3D model with Fusion Electrical

Sorry it has been a bit quiet but we had a few weeks in France and got distracted catching up on jobs there.  A minor update on this will follow.

I brought back a 30 day rope driven clock to work on for a fellow engineer who lives in France.  The movement has a 1 second pendulum and is marked as being made by Lawson of Bingley.   I haven’t found much wrong with it other than the hands were a loose fit on their arbors and were rubbing against each other and the dial.

In the course of working on the clock I needed a different style pendulum sensing optical sensor to interface to my Mumford Microset Timer.   This evolved before being modelled in Fusion 360 and then 3D printed.   A small sensor interface PCB module was also created in Fusion Electrical and milled on my Tormach CNC mill.  The body integrates the laser emitter, detector and PCB.   Below is a visual image from Fusion.   The pendulum swings through the U channel to break the optical beam and give pendulum timing pulses.

There are various M6 modelled mounting holes around the body.   The complete unit is powered from the Microset internal 5V supply.

A complete write up is available for download on the link below.

Interface to Microset Timer v4

Update : – I could not get the clock to accurate time while using a 3600 beat reference in the Microset.   I did a train count and discovered that the clock is actually a 3584 beat movement.  The clock is now doing very well with a few seconds per day error.

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Tormach PCNC440 blood donning solved

Hands up all those owners of a Tormach PCNC440 who regularly skin their hands, mostly their thumb knuckle, on the corners of the X axis stainless front skirt ? 

I have tried to de-burr both corners but to no avail.  It is just lethal to get anywhere near them when rummaging for a dropped part in the swarf (chips) or cleaning out the pan (do people do that or is it just me ?).

After a recent blood letting I decided enough was enough and fitted some electrical endless grommet around both corners.   You have to nick out a 90 notch to allow the grommet to follow the curve but that aside job done.  Hopefully less expletives in the workshop from now on but there again there will always be broken tools and Haimer tips to contend with.

electrical grommet protecting the skirt sharp corner
Electrical grommet protecting the X axis skirt sharp corners

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Try again after update completes Fusion 360 Error Message

I have had issues when opening Fusion 360 files downloaded from third party fellow users.   I never really got to the bottom of this.   Sometimes they would send me an assembly file and I could open the separate items in the structure but not the overall structure itself.

Things then got worse after a visit to France when I created some straight single item models on the machine out there.  On return to the UK I could not open these files getting a message “Try again when update completes”.   What updates ??  Both the Fusion install in UK and France were running the same version of Fusion so what was the problem ?

I happened upon a thread in the Fusion forum that suggested uninstalling Fusion and re-loading from scratch.   This solved the problem.   The files all now open on all machines.

Be warned – trying to find a simple click to download button on the Fusion site without going through lots of marketing click boxes is not simple.   I was expecting to just log into the Fusion site with my account details and find a hassle free download.   It doesn’t seem that simple.   I got there in the end though and all is running well.

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Windows 10 upgrade surprise

The desktop computer in France was running on Win7 and Fusion 360 needs Win10 or above.   I brought the machine back with us to the UK and decided to upgrade it to Win10.  I’m not yet prepared to step up to Win11.

As part of the upgrade I took out all the existing drives and fitted a 500GB SSD.  I loaded Win10 which went to plan and used the same email address and PIN entries for the user ID as I use on my UK machines.

Win10 came up with the usual generic blue opening screen and I then sat and began to plan what programs I needed to load for use in France.  After about 15 minutes the blue Microsoft desktop screen disappeared and was replaced with the same desktop image that I use on my UK screens.  

So tell me how does the new SSD and Microsoft know that this is my go to image for a desktop ?  It can only be registered in the Microsoft cloud storage against my account details.   Which is slightly worrying.

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Internet in France finally solved using SFR

As a regular reader of my blog you may recollect my frustrations last year trying to get reconnected to the internet in our house in France.   This followed failures by Orange and Free to deliver on promises.

We called in at a SFR boutique on Wednesday afternoon and somewhat apprehensively signed up with them on a new contract.   

On Friday evening we were told our line had been activated and that our router would be ready for collection on Saturday morning.   By midday on Saturday we were back on line.  Our previous router delivered around 9MB/s download and the new router is peaking around 15MB/s across the same infrastructure.  Full connectivity is now restored to all our devices in France and back into the UK.

To say we are pleased is an understatement.

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