I just received an informative message from Kenneth Maxon who operates Max’s Little Robot Shop, detailing how to create these impressive weatherproof boots:
Doesn’t that look seriously professional?
Don’t they look seriously professional? Well they should, because Kenneth is a professional at doing these sorts of things and he builds gorgeous robots for fun too.
Here’s the guts of how it’s done:
He’s made up a mold in aluminum on his CNC for the 2-part RTV Urethane. He uses core pins to keep the holes for the mounting screws open. The cable itself starts off with an overbraid that he heat treats with a match to keep it from unravelling. He then adds a piece of heat shrink tubing over that. You can also see the latex rubber, which sealed the top and bottom of the mold, and is meant to be torn off when the piece is removed from the mold.
I learned the technique of using the overbraid and heat shrink tubing from the PC Case Modding world, and it does make for nice slick cable ends. But Kenneth’s boot takes it to the next level. I could use some boots like these to coolant-proof my limit switches on my CNC mill.
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Bob is responsible for the development and implementation of the popular G-Wizard CNC Software. Bob is also the founder of CNCCookbook, the largest CNC-related blog on the Internet.
Now that is just TOO cool! Max makes it look easy, and it seems like it actually is. Gotta try that one day.
Just wondering if you have a direct link to the article. I tried looking around but wasnt to successful in finding it.
Josh, as far as I know, there is no original article. This was just based on a few photos and an email Kenneth sent to me.
Best,
BW
Thanks, I was going to feel really bad if it was on the first page or somewhere very obvious.