Small things I have made: March 2014

Coffee is another one of my obsessions. I recently acquired a restored 1980s Brugnetti aurora single-group, lever espresso machine. The restoration was (beautifully) done by Orphan Espresso and is documented, for those who are interested, here.

One of the things I have wanted to do for a while is replace the Europa badge on the front of the machine with something more in tune with the aurora design aesthetic. My suspicion is that the Europa branding was added after the machine left the factory in Italy, possibly by the American importer, as I find it hard to believe that the designers would have chosen a font with serifs (if they had used a different font at all).

This is the (plastic) badge on the back of the machine which I am going to replicate for the front:

There are a number of ways that this could be done. My first thought was that it would be a good project for the CNC mill once the three axes are running. With that in mind I started the process of generating a 2D drawing from some photos as the basis for a CAM file.

After a little time spent with the usual [image manipulation software] suspects trying to extract outlines from the images, I started to think that it would be considerably more efficient to find the font and simply redo the layout. This turned out not to be quite as easy as I thought! Despite the progress that has been made with the tools for graphic designers since I last looked (online image-based font database search!) I couldn't find an exact match. The font is really close to some derivatives of Eurostile, designed by Aldo Novarese in 1962, but there are some subtle differences. For this, really close just isn't going to cut it. So I knuckled down with the aforementioned usual suspects and produced a fair facsimile of the original.

Having made the gcode and finished the high-speed spindle mount for the Bosch-Colt router, it was time to look into tooling for cutting it.

Cheap Collets

http://gpcollets.com/bsch_cross.html?gclid=COeJoPq8uaACFRQWawodhCDwTA

http://www.precisebits.com/products/equipment/bosch_colt_collets.asp?tsPT=!!!Bosch-Colt!!!Collet!!!PG!!!#Tabs

(Better) Collets, TIR and why it matters

http://www.precisebits.com/tutorials/Choosing_collets.htm

What you need to know: TIR greater than 10% of the cutter diameter can be fatal to the tool.
Replace "can" by "will" in the previous sentence for small diameters (<1.0mm)....

http://www.precisebits.com/products/equipment/bosch_colt_kits.asp?tsPT=!!!Bosch-Colt!!!Kit!!!PG!!!

Small things I have made

Tuesday 4 March 2014

Resin Casting Guide

Aurora badge