Do you have a cool model railroad-related project or hack? Maybe something involving cool scenery tips, a new way of doing something like block control or model making, or perhaps a little more technology-oriented like using LEDs, various other electronics, computers, CNC in some fashion, or embedded microcontrollers like the Arduino? Well, if you do and you’ve registered as a trackhacker.com member, then feel free to submit your post on our Submit Your Post page using a cool little form with a neat WYSIWYG editor! I’ll review your post and if it gets published, you get credit and exposure and the Track Hacker community grows! Make sure to review the small list of submission rules prior to submitting material. Have fun and I can’t wait to see what you have in store! 
Craig Bickford
Just a very quick update on a couple of new features I have added to Track Hacker lately. The biggest and most noticeable is the addition of a Members Widget (top-right sidebar) where members can go and review their current Track Hacker rank, what awards, badges, and points they have, check the member leaderboard, check-in (once per day) to earn additional member points awards – register to be a Track Hacker site member (free and while not necessary to enjoy Track Hacker and participate it does offer some cool benefits) and you get an award badge and some Hacker Points (HP’s) – the new, official “currency” for Track Hacker registered members as a way of awarding members for interaction and participation. HP’s are like experience points (XP’s) from role-playing games – you earn levels and level badges and awards for earning a certain amount of HP’s. How do you earn HP’s after registration? Well, members who click the “check in” button in the new member widget in the top-right sidebar can get more HP’s once per day. Members who check in every day for a full month will earn a reward! Members who comment can earn additional HP’s as well as badges and awards for posting a certain amount of comments. The Member Widget also has a leaderboard to keep track of the members with the most HP’s. Checkout the image below. Trying it out for now – if it gets some use I will consider keeping it around. If not – gonzo!
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Well, it would appear my Mantis is down and out for awhile! 
I was doing some test cutting with it – I seem to have the settings in Mach2 correctly adjusted and with a little Ports & Pins tinkering from JT, working predictably and repeatedly – last night when right in the middle of plunging the spindle into a copper PCB, everything just stopped. The 24VDC power supply to run the driver board and steppers was dead with now power LED on! 
At this point, let me take you back a couple of days prior to this event to give you a little history. Two nights ago, I was test jogging the Mantis around in Mach2 making sure everything was working fine – it was. I deactivated the steppers (hit the Reset e-stop button in Mach) but left the driver and PC powered while I was watching Hell’s Kitchen (yeah, I watch Hell’s Kitchen – sue me! lol). I started watching the evening news afterwards and fell asleep. needless to say, I woke up in the middle of the night and found that the Mantis and the PC were both off and would not come back on. I was too tired to figure out what had happened so I went to bed. The next morning, I checked around and found out that ALL of the AC outlets in my basement were out yet all the lights worked as did my TV. After getting home from work that night I did some poking around and found that the first AC outlet on that branch line out of the breaker panel is a Ground Fault Circuit Interruptor (GFCI) outlet. Thinking maybe it popped I tried resetting it. Nothing so I tired hitting the test button – nothing. It appeard like it wasn’t working. I’ve had these GFCI outlets go bad before so I suspected that was the case. I took the cover plate of f the GFCI outlet and did some testing with my multimeter and found that there was indeed 120VAC going into the GFCI but nothing out on the other end. So figuring that since this a new house (only two years old) it must be a bad GFCI outlet - I jumped out the outlet to reconnect the downstream outlets to the breaker panel. The next evening, I started doing the test cutting I mentioned above. So I unplugged and replugged the 24VDC power supply into the mains – nothing LED still out. I disconnected the Mantis from the parallel port and then replugged the power supply in and it worked! Continue reading »
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You may have noticed something different when you checked out the site this afternoon. I never really cared for the old look of TrackHacker but I had been pressed for time and it was decent enough at the time. The crazy little guy manipulating dozens of computers and monitors with various train-related stuff on them was a little too busy to make an effective “brand” logo – wouldn’t look too good at the top of letterhead. Plus, while I did add the train-related bits, it wasn’t mine- it wasn’t original so I felt it was time for a change. Orange is my favorite color too! So here is the new look! What do you think of the logo? It’s a subway train linked to the website name and tagline via a schematic in case you thought it resembled an alien or something 
. Anyone recognize the font in the logo (the “TrackHacker” part)? Overall, I think the logo conveys the scope of Track Hacker nicely. Please leave comments about what you think of the new look – love it, hate it, in between – let me know!
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Well, I promised, like two weeks ago that I would have a big update for you complete with videos now that my Mantis PCB Engraver is done – sorry the Thanksgiving holiday got in the way. I think it was worth the wait.
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Just another quick update to let everyone know that I have been testing the Mantis, managed to damage and repair the Mantis and have a ton of new gotcha’s to add along with some cool videos of the mantis running. I will be updating really soon. Also, I am getting some feedback from readers that there is interest in buying Mantis kits – at least the wood parts, hardware, and the driver PC boards anyway. I am really, REALLY considering selling them but I need to hear from some more readers first to really gauge the interest. Please comment and let me know if your interested in buying precut Mantis CNC engraver wood kits and hardware. Check back in the next couple of days for the update and Mantis videos
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So here is the next big update to my Mantis build. I left off with the Y axis table done with the sides, front and back all attached to the base. The Y-axis drive nut was installed but the leadscrew and motor were not. So picking up from there I decided to drill out the 5mm holes needed to mount the leadscrews to the motors. I chucked each leadscrew in a lathe and using liberal amounts of oil, I drilled out one end of each leadscrew deep enough to insert the motor shaft fully. As it turns out, I was lucky to get these holes drilled straight and proper in the old lathe I used at work but I did so there are no problems to report. I then used the Loctite 638 to permanently mount the leadscrews to each of the steppers. I then went on to the Z-axis. This is the most complicated assembly in the Mantis since it incorporates the homebuilt spindle assembly into it. I ran into some gotcha’s on this one. As you can see from the image below, the Z-axis is composed of a plate that bolts to the X/Z connector via T-nuts, the 4 bearings, the two rods, two bottom plates and one top plate. You can also see the spindle motor mount and the pins that hold it in place.
Just a quick update to let everyone know that I HAVE finished building the Mantis CNC router, I am actively testing and troubleshooting it and that I do have a HUGE update to this series coming within the next day or two – probably tonight! I plan to put my own dimensioned drawings up in DXF format as free download for anyone looking to build the Mantis but most importantly I have a ton of pictures and tips and hints on building the Mantis as well as a bunch more “gotchas” that I ran into. Many of my readers cannot wait to see the update – JT I’m looking in your direction 
– and I can’t wait to get it up for all of you. Building the Mantis CNC engraver has been fun and I can’t wait to start putting it to use milling out some cool model railroading PCB’s.
I have started building my little Mantis CNC Router / PCB Engraver. If you’re not aware what the Mantis is, you can checkout David Carr‘s (the designer of the Mantis) blog/wiki at http://makeyourbot.org/mantis9-1 . It’s a little CNC router (footprint is 10″ x 10″) purpose built with a custom, low cost yet highly accurate and tightly built spindle specifically for engraving PC boards but it can be used for most any kind of light engraving or carving – the designer actually carved his face in chocolate in 3D relief! I am hoping to use the finished Mantis to carve PCBs for electronics hacks and maybe even for electronics kits available for sale here. I will continue to post my progress to the blog and let anyone interested in building this neat little machine some of the issues and gotcha’s I come across. So lets get everyone up to date here:
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Well I have started on a new CNC project even though I haven’t finished my CNC router yet although I am 95% finished with it. I have started building the Mantis 9-1 3-axes CNC PC Board milling machine by David Carr from MIT. It’s a fantastic little desktop PC board milling machine – it is little compared to the 12 inch by 18 inch capacity of my larger CNC router and I plan to use it to start doing some electronic projects – such as LED flashers, walkaround train controllers, sound boards etc… I plan to use the larger CNC router to put together some posts on making model railroad layout control panels, molds for casting building models in resin, etc.. while I use the small Mantis 9 for very intricate PC board milling and making fine brass model super-detailing pieces just to see how they come out. I have actually acquired all of the parts to make the Mantis 9-1 and it looks like a relatively easy build but we shall see.
