Adrian Hill (Hillcraft) from Cape Town, South Africa

[Hillcraft]

I stumbled onto this site today and spent many hours pouring over the ideas and projects. This site is absolutely brilliant. My entire life and business revolves around manufacturing and creative problem solving. We manufacture HO scale model trains and provide all sorts of design and manufacturing services to the public. I currently have a wide variety of technologies in house. I don't like having to rely on outside service providers so if I require another technology I do the research, buy or build whatever I need and learn to do it myself. The bottom line is that I love to tinker and this site is simply a stunning encyclopaedia for somebody like myself.

This is on my list of things to do in the very near future:
1. Pull the Leetro motion controller from my one laser cutter and fit a Mach 3 controller. The laser gantry system can then be used in all sorts of interesting ways such as a huge mill (with a spindle instead as a laser head) or a foam / polystyrene hot wire (pin) cutter and lots more.
2. I just installed a 15 ton injection moulding machine and I need to build a spark eroder to make moulds for all the tiny parts.
3. A 4th and even a 5th axis for my 400mmx400mm CNC machine.
4. I have an idea for a really interesting mini cnc router which could be very very useful to the general public.
5. A miniature injection moulder (this idea just popped into my head)
6. Add CNC to my EMCO Unimat 3
7. ....and the list just goes on and on....

Anyway...I am going to be spending lots of time here in the future.

Regards,
Adrian
Cape Town, South Africa

[Jon]

Hi Adrian - welcome to HomemadeTools.net

Sounds like you have a full plate! #4 above looks interesting. Any more details on the mini router concept?

[Hillcraft]

Hi, I'll show you once I've got the machine up and running.

[kbalch]

Hi Adrian,

Welcome - glad to have you here!

What a great variety of ongoing/upcoming projects. I'm curious about that injection molding machine. Pics of any or all of those, plus whatever else you'd like to share would be most welcome.

I'm looking forward to seeing your work.

Ken

[Paul Jones]

Hi Adrian,

Welcome and we are looking forward to seeing all your projects. I would appreciate seeing more about your adaptation of adding CNC to your Unimat 3. I too am a Unimat user and have published many Unimat SL modifications here at HomemadeTools but nothing too complicated like CNC.

Welcome, Paul Jones

P.S. I am writing this reply at 36,000 feet somewhere over the North Atlantic in a 777-300 on my way home from London to California. Technology has come a long way!

[Hillcraft]

This is my new (1978 model) Arburg 100UR. The machine is quite small @ 15Ton and a shot weight of 18 grams but it is perfect for my current needs. The nice thing is that the injector can be positioned vertically as well so that one can inject directly into the splitline. I'm going to start machining a new mold next week so I will hopefully have the machine fully operational then.



I make a lot of stuff but the best place to see what I am up to is on one of my Facebook pages and also on my Facebook group. The page (Scalecraft) is where I showcase my South African Railways models trains. The group I my attempt at bringing people from different technical / artistic disciplines together (South Africans don't seem to like to participate so I get to do 90% of the posting)

https://www.facebook.com/Scalecraft

https://www.facebook.com/groups/technocraftsa

[DIYer]

Hello Adrian, that's a really interesting project line up! Glad to have you here.

[Hillcraft]

Thanks for the welcome.

Where should I post about my foray into injection moulding?

[Jon]

Thanks for the welcome.

Where should I post about my foray into injection moulding?

One of these subforums would be ideal:

Homemade Tools
General Tool Talk