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Worx Maker X Review – WX988

June 28, 2021 by The Woodgineer Leave a Comment

When I found out about the Worx maker X line of multitools I was extremely excited.  Worx giving me a free set to review may have just pushed me over the edge!

They sent me the WX988 maker combo kit which comes with the rotary tool and soldering iron and uses the same battery pack all the Worx tools use.

Which is fantastic as I already have a whole bunch of Worx tools and really like them!

Maybe I love Worx tools a little too much…

Included in the kit is the usual battery and quick battery charger – I already have about 5 of these and they are massive but a smaller one is available if you want to consider making this a travel tool.

There’s the instructions of course.  Worx always give a really good set of instructions.

And a lovely little tool kit of rotary bits for the rotary tool.  There’s polishers, cutters, diamond burs and even some sanding tools and grinders – nice little start kit with most stuff the average crafter would need. 

I’m already fairly stocked on bits though.

The kit of bits that comes with

The main drive thingy itself, battery just pops in nice and simple and really light and really small even with the battery so potentially good for an everyday carry or camping gear.  There’s a good 1.2 metre long cable on here and it looks like its braided too so should last even if you accidentally nick it with your tool.

The Rotary Tool

The rotary tool uses a 3 pin din style connector that’s keyed so you can’t plug it in incorrectly.

The keyed connector so you cant plug it in wrong

Much like similar tools out there has a button you can lock the spindle on to change the tool and a little chuck and collet.  It looks like it fits the fairly standard 3.2mm or 1/8th bits that most tools take and indeed that’s what it comes with, nice.

Sadly it doesn’t fit my Dremel collets due to the inside diameter of the tub but the thread however is the same as a Dremel so you could use a mini Jacobs chuck or switch out the collar.

Bits only need to be hand tightened but there is a flat on the chuck and a little spanner included to give it some extra grip if you need it.

The rotary tool and spanner

It says in the manual it does 5000 to 35000 rpm which is again what you expect for this type of tool and the speed is controlled from this little knob here.  

It’s a shame it doesn’t have a speed control or even an on/off control on the tool itself as you would normally be holding something in one hand and with the tool in the other.  This is probably a feature I would pay more for if they had it available.

The power button releases the hounds! No it turns the thing on and off obviously.

The “Main Drive Thingy“

Oh and its torquey, jumps in my hand and not surprising there’s a nice brushless motor inside that’s pretty powerful for its size.

Its light and its comfortable to hold too.

I also suspect this won’t be as powerful as my foredom by a long shot but….its not meant to compare with a tool like that and my big foredom is not easy to take those outside.

Oh I can just imagine now, child playing on the tramapoline and the wife bringing me a pimms while I do some carving in the garden on a hot sunny day…..

So thats exactly what I did; took it out to the garden to do some of the most relaxing power carving I’ve ever done!

Power carving a Colin the Caterpillar Face in the Garden

Not content with some wood carving I tried some diamond burrs and did a little rock carving! 🙂

A little carved rock

Soldering Iron & Wood Burner

Now before I get carried away lets give the soldering iron a go.

Its not just a soldering iron I might add – it comes with some adapters that turn it into a little wood burning tool and comes with a few different shapes of nibs.  Sadly they seem to use a different thread size to the standard weller bits but still this is pretty nifty.

The Woodburning Tips

The soldering iron tip it comes with is pretty good but it doesn’t seem to fit my standard Antex, weller or TS100 bits and Worx don’t seem to do a spare currently.  Hopefully this is something they will do as without them, this thing is only going to last as long as the tip.

Oh comes with a little stand too, that’s nice.

Turning it on it does need another push of the button on the tool itself which is a nice little safety feature.

And oh that heats up pretty fast, it has a small display like many modern irons showing the temp and it can adjust it anywhere from 200 to 480 degrees C

The Iron Heating Up

It also comes with what looks like a silicon sheath for extra protection so I’ve popped that on.  Bit fiddly to do but worth it as you can hold the iron for a lot longer.

Heat up time there was about 25 seconds to get to 200 degrees which wasn’t as fast as advertised but certainly that’s plenty fast.  It took just under 60 seconds to get to the full 480 degrees c.

It cools down from 480c in about 10 minutes so it can be cold enough to touch the end again.

Swapping the bits out is as simple as unscrewing the bit, being careful with the heating element there and sliding one of the attachments on with the tip screwed in.

Nice.

So I can imagine if you don’t already have a soldering iron, maybe you have a small desk as your maker area this could be a really really nice system but where it really shines is taking it on the go.  You could take it camping or just out in the garden or really anywhere you like.

So it’s a nice day, lets take this thing outside!

Here’s a little soldering project that I’ve been putting off for ages – suddenly the motivation to finish it while I sit in the sun with the birds chirping away its not so bad.  It’s a plug that needs adding to this transformer so I can test out some LED panels.

Soldering in the Garden

Could do with a smaller tip but this is pretty good.

Summary

So my final thoughts on this tool system? Would I take it tomb raiding with me?

Yes – I would take it on an adventure to find the lost ark

Some of the downsides are the incompatibility with other tools or lack of spares but this is no biggy, the rotary tool will accept any 3mm bit you can think of and it wouldn’t stop me buying one if I needed to.  If I had a choice though, I might give the soldering iron a miss just because of the lack of replacement tips at this time but at the same time it makes a good emergency or site soldering iron.

However, for what it is – I absolutely love it and while it’s no replacement for a top of the line soldering iron or my foredom it’s not trying to be and it works really well.  I love that I could put a more powerful battery on and carve away for hours and I love that I don’t have to clean up my mess by carving outside.

My Foredom Rotary Tool

Thanks you Worx for sending me this, I think during the summer especially its going to get a lot of use!

The Worx Maker X – Just Awesome

The Maker X system is out now on amazon and I’ve popped some affiliate links in this video description so please check them out.  If you do end up buying one I get a tiny cut of the sale and you don’t pay any more – win win!

https://amzn.to/3w06oKB

If you have any questions for me or Worx on the product please pop them in the comments below or on my video and as always I’ll try to get round to answering every comment.

Filed Under: Reviews, Woodworking, YouTube Videos Tagged With: maker, maker x, makerx, makerx rotary tool kit, review, reviewer, reviews, the woodgineer, wood burning tool, woodgineer, worx, worx 20v, worx makerx, worx makerx combo kit, worx makerx tool kit, worx power share, worx power tools reviews, worx review, worx tools, worx tools maker, worx tools maker x, worx tools review

Making a Walking Stick

June 28, 2021 by The Woodgineer Leave a Comment

This video is dedicated to my dad on his 70th birthday and I have a guide below explaining the whole process of how I made this walking stick for him.

I’m making him a walking stick as he enjoys walking but due to an old injury struggles a little so I thought this might help.

And since I mentioned his age and frailties, he can also use it to beat me with!

For this project you will need:

  1. A stick – hazel, ash or any strong wood works well
  2. Some buffalo horn pre-shaped – I’m using a pistol grip style
  3. A bone disc – not vital but will make the handle look much nicer
  4. Threaded bar – I’m using 8mm
  5. Brass ferrule for the end of the stick
  6. Epoxy
  7. Sandpaper – multiple grits
  8. Abrasive paste

I started by sanding the end of the pre-shaped buffalo horn flat. I wasn’t too worried about a fine finish here as this is where the glue would go so I just used 180 grit sandpaper.

The Pre-shaped Buffalo Horn
Sanding the Buffalo Horn

I then marked a centre point with my centre finder, set the drill depth about 30mm and drilled a small hole for the 8mm threaded rod that will connect this to the stick.

Marking a centre point on the horn

I then took the (presumably human?) bone and sanded it flat and the two ends parallel to each other and again marked the centre but this time drilled the hole straight through it.

I then marked with a pencil where the bone and horn meet and slowly shaped the bone down to size with my bench sander.

Sanding the bone to size

The hazel stick I had to grow so I used some hazelnut chocolate, dirt and water and a few magic words…

Growing the Hazel stick

Once grown I tested the ideal height using me as reference since I’m about the same height as my dad.

I then cut the stick to the size accounting for the rough size of the handle and then marked the centre of the end of the stick.

Checking the height of the stick

I then drilled a pilot hole to make sure the hole lined up correctly (I’ve been burnt by this before!) and finally a larger hole for the threaded rod.

Drilling a pilot hole for the threaded rod

I then double-checked the handle would match up with the stick, sanding and shaping the bone and horn further until it was a perfect fit.

The other end of the stick needed a ferrule to protect it so I did a test fit and whittled down so it fitted snuggly.

Once happy I mixed up some 5 minute epoxy and glued the ferrule onto the end of the stick ensuring any excess was wiped off quickly. Its better to do this now than later ones its dried!

Glueing up the end of the stick to fit the ferrule

While the glue was out I turned to the parts of the handle and glued them together. To ensure everything was a really tight fit I put clamping force on the threaded rod with my vice and a separate wing nut onto the bone spacer.

Once properly dried I did some final shaping of the head piece to ensure it matched the stick then sanded up the grips with 120, 240 and finally 400 grit sandpaper. In hindsight I should have used more grit sizes in between to hide the toolmarks as this made the final sand extremely long.

Sanding up the grits

I then put on some Yorkshire grit, an abrasive paste that I normally use for woodturning. Its amazing stuff though and worked into the piece it gives you a wet sand that doesn’t get dust everywhere plus the particles in it break down to give you finer and finer sand as you go on. I wipe it off when done leaving something fairly polished without doing actual polishing.

Polishing the horn with Yorkshire Grit

I last check to see it fits and then I add epoxy to the thread rod and glue the head onto the stick.

Drizzling Epoxy onto stick

The bark I wanted to leave on as this helps protect the stick, just as it once did while the tree was growing. Plus it looks fantastic.

A special mix of 1 part linseed 1 part tung 1 part mineral spirits was mixed up and I put on 3-4 coats with 24 hours between coats lightly with lint-free cloth.

Putting the finish onto the stick

Teak oil works too instead of Tung and I can say since its nearly 2 years since he’s had the stick, its held up extremely well.

My dad absolutely loved it!

The stick (sorry to ruin the magic), ferrule, bone and handle were purchased from the awesome Keith Pickering and not actually grown. If you want to make one please check out his stuff at:
http://www.thestickman.co.uk

This is my first walking stick but I’ve developed a taste for it so please let me know if you’re interested in seeing more! Maybe next time I’ll hand carve something interesting for the handle.

Final stick

Please subscribe and hit notify to be updated when I release new videos and constructive advice/feedback/ideas are all welcome in the comments below or on the video.

Also find me in these internety places:
https://twitter.com/thewoodgineer
https://www.facebook.com/TheWoodgineer
https://instagram.com/woodgineer
https://www.patreon.com/thewoodgineer
thewoodgineer@gmail.com

Thanks all!

Filed Under: Projects, Walking Sticks, Woodworking, YouTube Videos Tagged With: amazing walking sticks, bone, carving a walking stick, hazel, hiking, hiking stick, how to make, how to make a self defence walking stick, how to make a simple walking stick, how to make a walking cane, how to make a walking stick, knob stick, making, making a cane, making a walking stick, prince of wales knob, stick, walking, walking cane, walking staff, walking stick, walking stick (product category), walking sticks

Can I Convert a 3D Printer into a CNC?

June 8, 2020 by The Woodgineer Leave a Comment

Well yes, I did and this is the video. I turn an old Prusa i3 into a budget CNC with a spindle kindly donated by Banggood. Its not a bad little machine for the cost and will cut wood, plastics, arcylric and even just about handle aluminium (with issues) Check out the video here and see how I did!

The 3D printer I’ve a few years now just sitting in the shed
as I have my nice Lulzbot Taz 3 so its about time I gave it a new lease of life.

It was a good printer for its time and as I built it myself I’m very familiar with the design so it’ll lend itself perfectly to this project.

My first thought as I’m sure many have considered before, there isn’t much difference between a 3D printer and a small CNC machine.

They typically both have small stepper motors that drive a tool end of some kind along several axis to reproduce a digital file.

3D printers do additive manufacturing using a plastic extruder usually and CNC machines a rotary cutting tool to do subtractive manufacturing by carving away the unwanted material.

Plastic Extrusion

Surely it’s as simple as swapping out the extruder with the spindle right?

*bad idea*

On both a CNC or 3D printer something needs to tell the motors exactly what to do.

In this case an old RAMPS board with an Arduino mega controls the various motor directions as well as telling the extruder motor how much plastic to squirt out and when.

This would probably work just fine with a bit of reconfiguration.

Unboxing and Testing the Spindle

Lets look at the spindle first. It comes well packaged and 2 has 2 short wires with bare ends as well as a nice aluminium mounting block.

The Spindle

If you want to check it out you can buy it here:

https://www.banggood.com/custlink/DDDDwICBHj

This code will also get you 15% off: BGMotor003

You also get a power supply and variable speed controller allowing the spindle to be ran at anywhere between 1-3000 RPM.

I knew immediately the cables would not be long enough so I soldered on some additional length and then set about testing the spindle to make sure it worked well.

And it did. Amazingly well in fact.

I did have some trouble with the connections, partly because the PSU labels were in Chinese but this was nothing a quick google couldn’t fix. The pic below shows what wires go where.

Chinese Writing – any no Earth!

Testing the Old Printer

I needed to know the old 3D printer still worked after all it had been in a damp shed for a few years now.

The Old Printer

It sorta worked and the print is recognisable it’s the logo from old makerspace So Make It.

Probably needs recalibrating but I didn’t bother with all that as I was about to completely reconfigure this machine.

Plus I must admit I was a little intimidated by the tidy wiring that I would need to deal with.

(it was a state)

For now I’m going to run the spindle in isolation at a set speed using the provided power supply and speed controller rather than doing anything clever like letting the electronics handle the speed.

It’s just one less thing to go wrong!

Reconfiguring

The glass print bed is great for holding down your 3D prints but the idea of a rotating carbide endmill crashing down on it scared me a little so I knew this had to go.

Look at that image from before, an Ikea mirror tile, this thing is pretty sophisticated!

I got rid of it and replaced it with a piece of plywood so its cheap enough to cope with a few holes and be replaced if necessary as well as being fairly dimensionally stable.

The plywood Bed

The extruder also had to be removed as well as all the associated wiring like the heater cables and temperate probes which made things a bit easier to deal with.

The banggood spindle comes with a nice mounting bracket that means I just need to drill a few holes in the existing mounting plate.

But I’m impatient and a bodger so I used some of this awesome Gorilla tape to make a temporary mounting.

My sophisticated Spindle Mounting System

There. Looks proper good that as you can see! 😉

The current firmware on this board was on old version of Marlin since as awesome as Marlin is, it was designed for 3D printers not CNC mills.

Ordinarily you would expect something on this machine called GRBL.

I used some firmware that already been written called GrblforRAMPS by Per Ivar Nerseth but had limited sucess and messed around with the latest Marlin build with some tweaks.

This was easy enough to download from Github and install onto the board using the Arduino IDE.

Marlin Code

As there is no longer an extruder or hot bed as well as all the temperature probes that come with that, I removed any references to them in the code.

Initial Testing

I used Repetier to drive the machine as that what I used on this printer before and I know it works. Its free and fairly easy to use.

Repetier

And for the first cut I inserted a 3mm end mill piece also from banggood.

https://www.banggood.com/custlink/DGvyjLR317

I’ve not used any of their tool bits before but have found them to be great value if you don’t mind waiting a little longer for them to arrive.

Some scrap pine was stuck down to the bed with carpet tape.

I love this stuff, double sided, cheap and grips really well but not so well that you cant remove stuff afterwards.

OK what could go wrong I thought…..

Well a lot it turns out. My steps per inch was off and I had a major crash of the spindle into the bed causing lots of smoke 🙁

This was a quick fix in the code using the Arduino IDE

Seems to work OK.

I used Estlcam to generate the toolpaths as it can generate Marlin compatible gcode and again, its free and easy to use.

I still wasn’t happy however and things were just not working as well as I had hoped.

Changing the RAMPs Electronics

I really wanted to make this work with the printers existing electronics and it kinda’ does. It’s not easy to reconfigure however and the software I’ve got loaded is nearly five years out of date.

I could probably muddle through but there’s an easier way.

I ditched the RAMPs board and the Arduino and switched to a dedicated CNC board that runs the latest builds of GRBL, runs 3 axis and is of course available from Banggood (sorry if this reads like a giant ad, I just buy a lot of my stuff from them!)

Adding a Proper Spindle Mount

The flex in my tape mounted spindle was pretty bad during that though so I should probably make a more serious mounting bracket.

Drilling Holes in Walnut Spindle Mount

I measured up a bit of walnut, cut to size and drilled holes to fit the existing x carriage and holes for the aluminium mounting block.

Fantastic, that looks a little more professional, I could almost call this thing a fancy name and launch a kickstarter.

Final Tests

It made sense to use a shape I’m familiar with so I used the makerspace logo again, but scaled it up a bit so you can see the detail with a 3mm bit. I didn’t have anything smaller at this time.

I thought some limewood would be ideal for the first cuts since its fairly soft and I made sure it was extra secure on the bed this time.

A Recognisable Cut of the Southampton Makerspace Logo

You can see from the image I have a recognisable cut! The Southampton makerspace logo (the shape of a spanner)

I switched from Estlcam to Inventables Easel as its free and extremely easy to use, much simpler than anything else I’ve used so far.

You can just I just pick what material you’re, using, tell it how big it is, add a pattern or something that you want to cut, tell it the depth and can generate the tool paths.

Easel Software

I also switched to something that’s designed to run a CNC, the openbuilds control software. Again this is free and easy to use.

Oh and you can control your machine with your phone too which is pretty cool.

Using Phone to Control System

I just move my spindle to a reference point, say the bottom left corner on top of what I want to cut, set this as my home position and then start.

I then tried to something a bit deeper this time, a smiley face 😊 You can see from the images it turned out OK!

I then tried a stamp. I used rubber material at first designed for laser cutting but this was too soft and didn’t work well so I switched to something a little harder; linoleum.

A Successful Stamp

That worked great and made a functional stamp.

I tried acrylic with a little cut of Olaf from Frozen. It was a bit too melty as I was using cheap dremel bits but still was a good recognisable cut.

Olaf from Frozen on Acrylic Sheet

The final test was aluminium.

I found it cut but bit of a weird step feature which I knew was not missing steps or a sliped belt as the artifact was not repeated. After some comments from my subscribers I think this was down to the flex of the bed.

Cutting Aluminium

But it cuts! – so success! (sorta)

Best Cut on Aluminium

Summary

So I learned loads making this thing, for light cuts and engraving its actually a useful machine but you can see from the wobble its not really suitable as a serious CNC.

I can say the spindle does not need to be changed, this things pretty good for a small machine. Banggood do more powerful ones as well if you need it.

I bet I could modify some stuff to improve things though.

I’ve considered adding some powerful motors, changing the plastic parts out for something more rigid, change the belts to lead screws and maybe redesign the structure to add to its rigidity.

Belts and Lead Screws

No I’m not even that crazy when you can just buy a fairly well designed little machine for around £150-200

So thanks very much all for reading and please check out the video if you want to see some of the disasters and fun I had. If you have any questions please shoot!

Filed Under: 3D Printing, Blog, Projects, YouTube Videos Tagged With: 3d printed, 3d printer, 3d printer cnc, 3d printer cnc conversion, 3d printer engraver, 3d printer to cnc, 3d printer to cnc router, 3d printer to engraver, 3d printer to laser engraver, cnc machine 3d printer, convert, converting 3d printer to cnc, converting 3d printer to engraver, cutting acrylic with a 3d printer, cutting wood with a 3d printer, delta 3d printer, engraver from printer, printer, the woodgineer, woodgineer

Stick Family

May 4, 2020 by The Woodgineer Leave a Comment

Not in any way inspired by the Hey Duggee stick we decided to make some of these little stick people for the garden! Keep reading to find out how we made them or check out the video!

First we had to collect some suitable sticks of course so we set out into our local woods and responsibly collected some small sticks.

I must admit I worried that onlookers might have thought I had my child collecting firewood but I’m not that cruel.

Besides the chimneys currently blocked and I need to send her up there to clear it out.

Once the sticks were home and on my workbench we cut a small mouth into them with a pull saw and Ellie coloured in the mouth with some sharpies. Ideally we’d have painted the wood but she was impatient!

Then the mandatory googly eyes were added as its not a proper thing unless it has googly eyes. I did this myself as the self adhesive on the googly eyes wasn’t good enough to stick to rough wood so I had to use some super glue.

We then stuck hair onto them with PVA glue. This consisted of some twine and wood shavings.

And finally planned in the garden so they can look after our freshly grown seeds!

I’ve also made a short video here if you want to watch!

Filed Under: Blog, Kids, Nature, Outdoor Activities, Uncategorized, Woodworking, YouTube Videos Tagged With: crafting, crafts, fun workshop activities, how to make a stick person, kids workshop, mad maker dad, stick, stick people, sticks, the mad maker dad, toddler crafts, wood craft, woodland, woods

Making a 3D Printed Animated GIF

January 28, 2020 by The Woodgineer Leave a Comment

Hey people – I’ve been playing with 3D printed lithophanes and making these awesome photos come to life. This short tutorial post will go over the steps I made to create the Picard animated GIF in the video using 3D printed frames – a 3D printed animated GIF if you will!

  • You will need: Nothing!
  • If you don’t have a 3D printer you could always make these and get a 3D printing service such as 3D Hub or shapeways 🙂
  • You need a light source to shine behind the lithophanes but of course you could just use the sun 😉

So the concept of lithophanes has been around for hundreds of years. They were originally made of thin porcelain and would involve etching or molding artwork onto the substrate and shining a light source behind to reveal the artwork. Thinner areas let more light through and thicker areas less so with some skill some quite detailed images could be represented.

Only in recent years we’ve seen them 3D printed and people have figured out lots of ways of making them.

You can now make them directly in Cura or use your favourite 3D modelling package but I’ve been using this online tool by Mark Durbin. It’s available at:

3Dp.rocks/lithophane/

The tool lets you upload an image and it will directly process this into a STL file which you can download and print.

There are some basic controls for modifying the STL and choosing different shapes.

There’s the standard flat, curves both concave and convex, a solid cylinder, pillow shaped, dome shaped and even heart shaped.

Printing them needs to be done vertically as the bottom layer squashing can distort and lesson the effect. So once you have your image turned into a model, you may need to rotate it.

I’ve done a range of different thicknesses and found for normal ABS and PLA 3mm thick is optimal. Any less and you lose definition and anymore and light doesn’t get through the thicker parts.

Although I’m sure somebody has done it, I’ve not seen anybody do much with stop motion lithophanes yet.

Probably because there isn’t any logical reason to but hey, sometimes you just want to do stuff because you can.

And partly to celebrate the new Star Trek spin off Picard and partially because I needed something short to test I decided to use the classic Picard face palm meme!

Preparing the 3D Prints

First I used this nifty online tool EasyGIF to break the meme into separate images.

https://ezgif.com/split

There were about 39 in total but I only needed 27 of them to convey fully what’s going on.

I then manually imported and made STLs for each image.

And of course 3D printed them.

Preparing to Take the Photos

With all the Picard’s printed I needed some kind of jig so they could all be placed in the same place relative to the camera and I could run a little stop motion magic.

I was going to 3D print something complicated but a scrap piece of wood will do fine for testing.

Camera mounted one end with an elastic band.

I’m using a c920 logitec web cam here as it’s a great little camera for being able to adjust settings.

Pop the light the other end and the frame goes in the middle.

A little bit of experimentation was needed to get the thing just right. It took a while to play with the settings to get things looking good.

Contrast needed go up a bit higher so we can make out the detail and of course I needed to adjust the focus.

I put to make a mark on the wood where the base sits so I can make sure each one is in the same place.

And to make extra sure things stayed in the same place, I glued a little bit of wood onto the board. Now the frame can quickly push up against it.

I wasn’t too worried about it being slightly too left or right as this can be fixed in the software later.

Making the Animation

Now the fun job, lets take a photo of each of these 27 frames….

With the photos done I imported them into Adobe Premier. This is remarkably easy to do, just make sure your images have some kind of sensible number order as the filename.

In Premier go to import, select the first image and tick the Image Sequence checkbox. This will import all those images as a sequence you can then use just like any other video clip.

This sequence was 27 frames long which is just over a second of footage. To complete the circle I rendered it as an animated gif and again this is really easy to do in the latest versions of Premier, just select the Animated GIF option as your export format.

And there we go, happy Picard day everybody!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial or the video and I’d love to know what meme to do next. Maybe you can make one too?

Let me know if you do!

Oh and I’ve uploaded this to Giphy here:

Picard GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

So if you want to use it, please feel free!

And again remember to check out the video if you haven’t!

Filed Under: 3D Printing, Experiments, Projects, Uncategorized, YouTube Videos Tagged With: 3d print, 3d print lithophane, 3d print lithophanes, 3d print pictures, 3d printed, 3d printed lithophane, 3d printer, 3d printing, 3d printing ideas, 3d printing images free, 3d printing lithophane pictures, 3d printing lithophanes, 3d printing photos, 3d printing projects, 3d printing your photos, animated gif, gif, how to 3d print lithophanes, image to lithophane, lithophane, lithophane 3d print, lithophane lamp, lithophanes, picard, star trek

Bosch IXO Special Edition Screwdriver Review

June 24, 2018 by The Woodgineer Leave a Comment

Ladies and gentlemen put your best dress or suit on and get ready for some DIY with glamour! This is my review of the Bosch IXO limited edition lithium ion screwdriver made with Swarovski crystal embellishments. DIY will never be unglamorous again!

First of all let me start by saying I am in no way affiliated with Bosch in any way, they haven’t sponsored me and well…probably never will now!

Sometime….last year I won this bosch IXO screwdriver in their prize draw and it’s pretty much been sitting in a box ever since. 

I’ve tried to sell it but never got any reasonable offers so thought its about time  I just break it out of the box and use it.

Which was also a great opportunity to do an unboxing and review.

Now I’ve always been a big fan of Bosch tools.  I have a Bosch router, a jigsaw and a hammer drill and never had any complaints with any of them in and I’ve been using them for years.

But when I saw this lovely little tool I honestly did not know what to think….

It retails for just under £300 on Amazon compared to the normal £30 you would pay for their regular old IXO.

And it is basically their £30 IXO cordless lithium ion screwdriver but with one big difference….

It is embedded with Swarovski crystals!

Well it certainly is….sparkly!

I’ve no idea what Bosch had in mind when they designed this but it was a limited edition so I’ll give them some slack.

There are apparently 700 swartschy crystals embedded – I would count them but I have a dinner party to attend and its bring and assemble your own dining room table.

So the screwdriver itself feels good in my hand, certainly bosch did put a great deal of thought into ergonomics when they designed this and it feels pretty lightweight.  The specs say about 300 grams although I’m not sure if that includes the weight of the crystals of course..

This special edition was made I’m told to mark the 10 millioth IXO screwdriver sold so Bosch have had plenty of time to review and refine the design.

Also in the box is the usual manual, charger and a 10 piece bit set which is pretty nicely tucked into the charger.  Oh and it even comes with spare crystals just in case some fall out!

The bits can be inserted quickly enough and oh….there is a small LED light fantastic….if your working in dark corners of course.

It comes with a reasonable bit set as you would expect and of course a charger which apparently can charge thing in about 5 hours.

Battery life in most of the reviews I’ve seen says about 4 hours but I did a more realistic test as with a load perminantly on.  It lasted for about an hour which I think is OK for what you need it for.

So it looks like there is a range of attachments you can get for the IXO and…oh my….I’m not sure why I wasted money on all these other tools now I really needed to get these…

A BBQ fan thingy, a wine bottle opener, A salt and pepper grinder…

I think I found out what’s going to be on this years xmas list!

Well there isn’t really much to be said about that other than its significantly more convenient than using a normal screwdriver or my cordless drill.

The torque probably is fine for general DIY stuff but any significant resistance and it stops.  Of course this could be really useful if your careless with your tools and only want limited torque when assembling stuff.

It also only spins at around 200rpm so no variable control like your normal drill/driver but this is fine.

The specs say its about 55w and when you consider a my cordless 24V drill is 300w and my impact driver 550w this is never going to replace them obviously but for general screwing as per its intended purpose fine.

I feel I now need to wear a tie upon going into the workshop so I tried to gift it to my lovely wife.  But she told me to go away (actually not the exact words she used)

It looks like I’m stuck with it.

So any good review you have to ask the question would I buy one of these?

And honestly the IXO driver, yes.  Its small enough to sit near my assembly bench as an extra screwdriver to aid in general assembly work and definitely good enough for basic DIY jobs around the house such as cobbling together some Ikea furniture.

Would I buy the sparkly crystal embedded version for £300?

What do you think?

No.  The answer is no…

You can buy some of the items mentioned in the video here.  Note that as an amazon affiliate I will take a small share of the profits but the product wont cost any extra.

The latest IXO screwdriver https://amzn.to/3yog04d

The spice grinder attachement https://amzn.to/34dTc9L

The bottle opener https://amzn.to/3vhEBpH

The BBQ fan thingy https://amzn.to/33XPOzF

Filed Under: Reviews, YouTube Videos Tagged With: blingupyoutools, bosch ixo, cordless screwdriver, diy glam, glamorous diy, power tools, sparkly, swarovski, swarovski crystals

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I’m sad to say I’ve reached the end of the tot I’m sad to say I’ve reached the end of the totally fantastic @cabmech automata tinkering global workshop but have finally “finished” this little tribute to @badlipreading seagulls! (stop it now) 
Its riddled with flaws and doesn’t work 100% BUT each problem has been a teaching moment and there are so many little lessons from this one little piece.  I might post up some of the issues and what I’ve learned if there is interest.
As for the course - if you have any interest in Automata or mechanical mechanisms I highly recommended it.  Caberet Mechanical Theatre are currently taking signups for the next workshop.  We had some amazing guest speakers such as @smithautomata @carloszapataautomata @automatamaker and @firetheinventor and the facilitators were absolutely amazing!  I learned not just tips and tricks on how to make but also how to re-evaluate my approach to making stuff and re-learned how to play and tinker.
Also I’ve finally been given the kick up the bum to start properly working on Automata so expect to see me post a few badly working prototypes soon followed hopefully and eventually by things I’d feel happy about selling!
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I’ve been struggling with various wooden things putting pressure on myself to finish something perfect and that is what I want to ultimately create but sometimes it’s OK to just protype and mess around with cardboard. 
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#cmt #caberetmechanicaltheatre #automata #steam #steameducation #play
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