I hope that the absence of smiley faces doesn't imply that I was in any way serious with my comments about French justice. Because I'm 50% French, my father's parents were immigrants from France, I felt a freedom to joke about the subject. I was just having fun with tufty; besides, he started it!
My bad :-P
I'm glad you said it so I could clarify.
Those round caps look beautifully industrial. Glorious. And that annular cutter makes me drool.
What lathe do you have? No way of getting (or making) an R8 collet adaptor for your headstock?
I have a pre WW2 Logan with a badly worn 3 jaw chuck. I don't have many hours on it and little metal lathe experience period. I might be able to get collets but I'm not sure I want to put much money into it. I may hold out for a deal like the one you got.
One of the biggest problems with the 'learn by doing' method is that if things don't work right, you don't know for sure if it's the tool or operator error.
Nice job with the bondo hack. Work holding is the hardest part of milling IMO. I'd love to have a vacuum table, but even those only solve a handful of problems.
Have you posted a layout of your key mapping ideas? So many buttons to use for capslock now, I want to know which one(s) you choose
The Bondo trick worked great and if anyone out there benefits from it, I'm happy.
As for key mapping, no major changes from the original plan. Because I am a somewhat new keyboard user, being twice the age of the average GHer before I even began using a computer, I'm still discovering keyboard shortcuts and tricks which affect how I want the layout.
Caps lock? Although I'll have plenty of keys, I doubt if I will have more than 4 dedicated caps lock keys. Just kidding. I will have some duplicate modifiers on the ring though. As I wrote earlier in the thread, the primary purpose of the ring keys are to execute various CAD functions without my hands leaving the ball. One thing that I will note is that I still really like my AlumaPlop's key mapping and physical layout and most of the features will be part of P6. The absence of outer rows beyond the Q and P columns, the omission of a function row, easy to reach thumb keys, staggered columns, 15º 'toe in' angle on the split, some tenting, the reduced row pitch, and the large center mounted trackball work very well for me. The only negative I can think of is that it, like any ergo board, doesn't work well from most positions. You have to commit yourself to it and sit down. Many people who have tried it have done so from a standing position. It just isn't as easy to use that way, even for me; the geometry is all off.
When it's complete, P6 will be tray mounted alongside the AlumaPlop at my desk. One for each computer. The AP will get out occasionally for extended laptop use but will probably spend most of its time next to his younger, but bigger brother.
One thing I haven't worked out yet is the firmware. In the past I've (or actually Ben- IC07)modified the ErgoDox firmware for my custom boards, but because the IO expander is unnecessary in a one piece design, its use is a more complicated and less elegant solution. If anyone would like to offer assistance adapting an existing keyboard firmware to work with P6, let me know. I'd need something that I could easily remap without any special knowledge, much like the Massdrop configurator.
Thanks everybody for your comments. Your suggestions are more helpful than you probably realize.