[Micro Rotors]

Hello All,

Here is a new toy for anyone to make. It is a great addition to my HF Mini Mill CNC. I got the idea from a article in the magazine Digital Machinist. It is a web cam that can be used for many, many things such as accurate optical measuring, locating, centering holes, measuring angles, edge finding and so on.

The conversion is explained in great detail in the article including listing what web cam to use. The one in the article can be bought on line from Walmart for $9.95 but I didn't want to wait so I went to Walmart and bought a different one made by the same manufacture. The only problem was, it had a different shape so I had to make a new housing and trim the board down a lot and add an extra mounting screw hole. It wasn't to much trouble to make and it only took about 7 hours to make on a lathe. The plastic is made from ABS and parts were glued with Weldon. The metal is 12L14 and the screws are 4-40 and 2-56 and a couple of really small self tapping screws from the camera.

The lens it manually focused and I had this thing focusing down to were the lens was literally on the part. I didn't think I needed to be that close so I backed it out to were the lens is now roughly .375 of the part. It is extremely clear even at that range.

The software is Mach 3 with the Point Cloud plug in.

The photos show the story.

Bill