Redsail RS6090 CNC router

I received this machine at work recently and these are my impressions about it.

First, this machine is made in China by a company called Redsail. They state that they sell in over 40 countries, with more than 10,000 machines sold. They have a wide range of machines, from small desktop laser engraver to big industrial multi-head CNC routers. They also have stone CNC engravers.

This model has a 24" X 36" work area, with 4" Z height.
The spindle is a water cooled variable frequency drive, 2.2KW motor. Top speed is 24,000rpm.
The chuck is standard ER-20 collet. Can take up to 1/2" dia shanks.

The construction of the table frame is cast steel, not pretty to look at but is flat and very rigid.
The Table frame sits on a 3" welded square tubing stand, also very rigid.
The gantry is made with very thick cast aluminium parts.
X and Y ballscrews are 1", Z ballscrew looks like 1/2"
25mm linear bearings and tracks all around.
No detectable backlash anywhere.
Spindle has less than .00025" runout, the limit of my dial gauge.
The electronic is hand held DSP control, separate drivers for the motors, the electronic enclosure is spacious with fan forced ventilation.It is integrated in the base.

The top of the table is covered with T-slot aluminium extrusions, and are very thin walled. They are rigid enough for sign making in wood or plastic, but can't handle precision machining in aluminium.
Also, those extrusions come covered with a "rigid foam" that will compress when you tighten the clamps to hold your work, making it very difficult to maintain the level of the part.

To correct this problem, I removed the foam and will replace it with 4" wide strips of 1/2" Ultra-High Molecular Weight Polyethylene (UHMW), fastened on the extrusions every 4". Then milled flat by the machine. The T-slot extrusion will be made more rigid by the addition of 2" X 1" aluminium structural extrusions on the underside. Will post more pictures later.

Dead birds falling, dead fish floating...

By reading some of the idiotic comments posted about the above recent events by the ignorant masses of idiots all over the net, you can conclude that the end of the world won't be brought upon us from external events like cataclisms or celestial alignments... but by collective extreme idiocy.

These mass bird and fish death have happened before and mostly caused by inhabitual weather events, in this case probably a cold snap.

Just look at what happens to the traffic in New York during the snow storm before Xmas...

Collective extreme idiocy is closely related to common beliefs and education of society. This is what happens when the only source of continuing education is TV game show and talk shows...

One comments was about the government not telling the truth about those events... The fact is very few people bother to look for the truth themselves, as it would require to direct their eyes away from their TV for 5 minutes...

What I find most funny is that if the end does come, 99% of the ignorant idiotic masses won't have a clue why.

Open Awareness

The aim of buddhist meditation, in one form or other, is to expand the awareness by un-focussing the attention. The difficulty reside in that "attention" is a brain function that is hard to control. Attention, just like breathing or digestion can't be stopped. And it gets bored fast, it jumps from objects to objects, constantly attaching itself to everything around you, or when done with the stuff outside you, it will start daydreaming about the past, or the future...endlessly talking to itself...

STOP! BREATHE! RELAX! become aware, but don't analyse. Just sit and be aware. Let the river of conscious thoughts go by without following them. It's not hard, just keep coming back to just being aware when you catch your attention focussing on something.

The Tree: I like this analogy. Imagine a big tree with thousands of leaves flapping in the wind. Hear the sound. Now focus on one leaf. See it move. Now move your focus on the leaf next to it. Now include the first one in your attention. Are you aware of the two leaves? Keep expanding your attention one leaf at a time until all the leaves are in your awareness. Becoming the tree is to be intimately aware of every leaves, branches, trunk and roots...

Awareness...

It's all about "awareness", isn't it? When talking about awareness, it's difficult to make sure everyone is on the same page. Zen Buddhism has a very precise definition of awareness. A quick search on the net will result in thousands of pages attempting  to clarify this point.

But really, what is awareness? One point of view is: awareness is what you get when all the sensory inputs are integrated and processed by the brain. The senses are the 5 body senses (touch, smell, vision, taste and hearing) and the mind. Buddhism in general consider the mind or consciousness to be another sense. So, we perceive reality through those senses, after the brain processes the information coming from the sense organ. The brain then organise this information into concepts and symbols, store them in memory, and then plays with it. Awareness is this entire process. When you focus your attention on an object, you assign more brain resources to the signals your senses are generating about that object. Thus you become more "aware" of it. During this process, all the signals your senses are generating about the other objects outside the focus of attention are more or less ignored, thus you are "unaware" of them. All of reality is still present to the senses, but awareness follows the focus of attention, like a flashlight in a darkened room, all objects outside the lighted area are dimmed and out of focus, but are still present. this restriction of awareness to the focus of attention is referred to as "everyday mind", or normal consciousness.

Understanding?

What is "understanding? What is meant by it? From the Wikipaedia; "To understand something is to have conceptualized it to a given measure. A cow has an understanding of the electrical fence. It may be limited to it's appearance and its effect, but it is an understanding because the cow will avoid the fence. The more complex the brain, the more understanding it can process.