My new Syil X5 CNC mill is ready to ship from the factory. Might be here by New Year if I'm lucky. This is it, just completed QA testing

@g4dbn it's huge

@g4dbn :O

Finally decided to join the 21st century and move away from 100% manual machining?

I'm excited to see what hardware you manage to make with it. Hope we still see some manual turning and such here and there though :)

@2m0sql @g4dbn Hot damn! That really is a serious toy! Neil’s definitely taking his machining seriously 😳 (not that I didn’t think that already!)

@g7vkq @2m0sql @g4dbn Go big or go home, as they say.

@g7vkq @2m0sql @g4dbn Just looked up the price. Gulp!

@g0fcu @g7vkq @2m0sql By the time you take into account the tooling, vices, probes, induction shrinkfit thingy, transport, installation, training, compressor, fancy coolant, 3 phase inverter and building mods, the total cost is the wrong side of £40k. It should pay for itself over a few years though

@azonenberg The main driver was so I could machine elliptical and offset-parabolic reflectors, plus things like laterally-displaced ellipse Gregorian antenna systems at mmWave frequencies, and slot arrays with hundreds of elements. The stress of doing manual machining for even a 2 x 24 slot array at 10 GHz is way too high, so 100+ precision slot arrays are best done on machines. Same with making batch runs of waveguide parts

@g4dbn shiny!
Will Amy be giving her views on its abilities?

@Dtl I rather imagine she'll either be very sniffy, or go full-on nerd-out about it

@g4dbn @azonenberg the possibilities…! I’m interested to know if you will be able to do very small runs of custom uwave & mmWave plumbing for amateur use.

@jmorris @azonenberg Definitely, I'll mostly be building up a stock of popular parts for sale rather than doing a lot of custom work, but it's only a matter of scale. I can do gold/silver plating, anodizing, laser marking, electroforming and casting, so most things are possible other than precision dishes more than about 230 mm diameter. Once I get the lathe modified for one-axis CNC, I should be able to make large cast aluminium dishes up to 18 inch diameter, but 12 inches is easier

@g4dbn @azonenberg those dishes should be well-sized for for > 100 GHz, especially with good surface RMS and feed accuracy. btw, something that would be broadly useful are matching plates for common Ku band satcom feed horns with a circular waveguide connection, to wr75 or wr90.

@jmorris @azonenberg I tend to prefer making the feedhorns - usually Pickett-Potter dual-mode or with integral chokes or septums. Wideband transitions almost always need to be made in two halves to get the sharp corners to mate with rectangular waveguides. I can do centrifugal casting, but getting a good enough finish is tough. Oval iris narrowband transitions are easy enough of course, I can make those on the manual mill. SMA, N and 3.5/2.91 mm transitions to w/g are always popular

@jmorris @azonenberg of course what I REALLY need is a wire EDM machine and a die sinker

@g4dbn @jmorris Oooh, shiny (literally).

I've never done any waveguide or over-the-air stuff myself (I generally am working with baseband communications stuff, trying to keep my microwave signals ON the board) but have always wanted to fool around with it.

With my instrumentation I can at least somewhat operate from DC to Ku band so any "starter stuff" you might be able to make in the WR90/WR75 so I can play around with 3cm / X-band amateur stuff would be cool. SMA to waveguide transitions, horn antennas, etc.

@azonenberg @g4dbn btw, there is a microwave group in the Seattle area: https://pnw-microwave.com/

@jmorris @g4dbn Ooh looks cool, except I'm on the far side of the water so I can't easily get to any of their meetings. It'd be a 2-3 hour trip depending on the exact route I take.

@jmorris @azonenberg I'm going to try to get to Seattle next year when I'm giving a lecture at a Microwaves conference in Vancouver. I want to visit the Connections Museum in Seattle and meet some microwave folks in the area

@g4dbn @jmorris Awesome. I'm across the water so it'll be a bit of a detour but if you don't mind the trip I'd love to have you over for a lab tour etc.

@g4dbn @g0fcu @g7vkq If its ultimate job will be earn you money not a bad investment long term :)

@azonenberg @jmorris Sounds cool, I'll see if I can get something organised. I checked the date and it's later than I thought, Oct 3-5, somewhere near Tsawwassen.

@g4dbn @azonenberg cool, I'm planning to attend and also have at least one paper.