I'm not a cue maker, so take this with a grain of salt...
In order to make the cuemaking process safer from a health standpoint, what about designing an unmanned finishing booth? The spray gun motion and trigger would be cnc controlled. The cues would rotate. You could design it to spray one cue at a time or 10 cues at a time or any number you wanted.
With the system being unmanned, maybe it could be designed to be very small, not much bigger than the cues and spray gun. It could be fully enclosed on all 6 sides, with a single air inlet and exhaust, both with a filter, and the exhaust also having a fan. Being compact and enclosed, it could also be used outdoors. No fear of flies landing on the cues. Any fumes would be dissipated into the wide open air much quicker than an enclosed shop. Temperature control would be a consideration though.
You would have to program the motion of the gun and the trigger on/off to apply a nice finish on all the spinning cues. I'm sure it would take some experimentation, but once set, it should be consistent from batch to batch.
Potential problems include clogging of the gun. It would go unnoticed, and the cue maker would have to correct it and re-run the batch.
You could use a Sata or knockoff spray gun and control the trigger with a solenoid. Or, you could buy a dedicated spray gun made for automation like the car companies use. That would probably be super expensive however.
CNC is dirt cheap these days. A few nema 17 stepper motors, an arduino or raspberry pi, some screws or cogged belts/pulleys for motion, and you have a cnc.
What do you guys think? Would this idea substantially improve the health risks of the cue maker? Would it produce a quality finish? Would anyone be interested in designing one?
In order to make the cuemaking process safer from a health standpoint, what about designing an unmanned finishing booth? The spray gun motion and trigger would be cnc controlled. The cues would rotate. You could design it to spray one cue at a time or 10 cues at a time or any number you wanted.
With the system being unmanned, maybe it could be designed to be very small, not much bigger than the cues and spray gun. It could be fully enclosed on all 6 sides, with a single air inlet and exhaust, both with a filter, and the exhaust also having a fan. Being compact and enclosed, it could also be used outdoors. No fear of flies landing on the cues. Any fumes would be dissipated into the wide open air much quicker than an enclosed shop. Temperature control would be a consideration though.
You would have to program the motion of the gun and the trigger on/off to apply a nice finish on all the spinning cues. I'm sure it would take some experimentation, but once set, it should be consistent from batch to batch.
Potential problems include clogging of the gun. It would go unnoticed, and the cue maker would have to correct it and re-run the batch.
You could use a Sata or knockoff spray gun and control the trigger with a solenoid. Or, you could buy a dedicated spray gun made for automation like the car companies use. That would probably be super expensive however.
CNC is dirt cheap these days. A few nema 17 stepper motors, an arduino or raspberry pi, some screws or cogged belts/pulleys for motion, and you have a cnc.
What do you guys think? Would this idea substantially improve the health risks of the cue maker? Would it produce a quality finish? Would anyone be interested in designing one?
