CN milled catapult

Ever since seeing this little 3D-printed catapult, i knew i had to build a better one. so i designed a bigger and more powerfull one in aluminium.

i used Fusion 360's adaptive clearing to remove the bulk of material, then fiunished of the pieces with contouring rounds.

Here, the parts are laid out for the assembly:

The spring assembly was constructed by layers of 1mm plywood, later knitted around, so that they are still able to slide, but not separate

Of course, i had to use a 3D-printed wrench to assemble it:

The arm was riveted to the main axle:

And here it is, in all it's glory besides the smaller 3D- printed catapult, and the printer who printed the small one.

Milling boxes in fixtures

As Koka Nikoladze had the need to machine some holes in some electronic enclosures, we produced some jigs to repetedly mounting and machining of these boxes.

For Bernt Isak's project, The Cosmos, we made a similar jig, also for cutting out por't for the Arduino's interface.

Welding aluminium strucures

This was a quick test of assembling aluminium parts.

As one can see in the lower left corner of this structure, the crossbrace, is intersecting through the sideplates. The hole i milled for the sidebraces has extended radiuses so that they can be filled with weld. i Used TIG for this one, that left a super clean, nice weld. After welding, i milled it away, to leave a flat and nice surface.

See through wooden sign

 Today, a client told me he wanted signs to guide his customers through his bar. The signs where to be subtle, but still clearly show the direction. They must also be able to blend in with the rest of the interior when not in use.

After a day of experimenting, this was the result, a wooden slate milled so thin that light pass through from the inside, leaving people puzzled when it turns of, only leaving a clean, untouched surface.



 

Autodesk Fusion 360

Yesterday, i and Christian Anker from bitraf spent all day produsing parts using Autodesk Fusion 360's CAM module. We produced the toolpaths on my macbook air, then seamlesly beamed them over to the CNC machine using Dropbox.

The more we learn about production technology, the more we can reduce the turnaround time from concept to reality. For the case of the two copper pieces below, that time ended up at 43 minutes.

Before the copper parts where made, prototypes where made in aluminium. The 3D milling where done at 25mm/sek, with a 1/8 inch ballnose mill.

This assembly is the hammer parts of Koka nicoladze´s new instrument; the solenoid drummer.

As we did further adventures into CNC milling with the shopbot, Christian anker decided he wanted to produce the build platform for his huge part for his 3D printer.

As it must be perfectly flat, it had to be facemilled. We decided to do this with this 32 mm milling bit.

This is the finished part rigth after milling:

Since teaching Christian to mill aluminium with the shopbot CNC machine, he has produced a number of parts for his 3D printer:

Wooden screwdriver set

Even tho i am a big fan of mass production, the tray that my screw drivers came in was poorly moulded from crappy plastic. I decided to remake the tray in oak plywood and aluminium.

This was a good exercise in Autodesk Fusion 360 toolpath generation.

The brass screws where made from 8mm rod, and the slits where cut with a jewelers hacksaw. Then they where turned in the lathe so that they sit flush with the aluminium frame.

This is the toolpaths for the aluminium frame. it has roughing offsets, to make space for evacuating the chips from the cut.

This is where things gets complicated. The wooden tray is 3D milled. That means that the CNC machine is moving with all axises at the same time, to produce smooth edges with a round cutter.

Holddown

I prefer to use lasercut wood washers to mount the material on the CNC, aswell as keeping the piece from moving under cutting.

This part were cut from 5mm polyethylene, a very soft material. Therefor, it had to be secured well before cutting.

The washer are cut to spec, so that they fit exactly in the slot.

This part needed to be chamfered around the outer perimeter. To allow this, it had to be secured with a number of washers and screws. Itwas not possible to avoid collision with the washers on the thin parts, so these where hold down with wood washers, while the rest of the part where secured with steel washers.

In this example, i was making a table, and the legs where to be chamfered from both sides. To acomplish this, i cut a jig for the part from some scrap wood. As this jig where cut by the machine itself, i can now position the part perfectly in the machine each time.

Testing out 3D milling in Fusion 360 once more

Today i did some more testing of Fusion 360`s CAM module.

I made a sample 100 X 100 X 50 body, then made a  T-spline plane ontop of it. I then gave it some random topography to work with.

After boundary filling , the part is ready for Toolpath generation!

I intended to run the first files in foam, so i ramped up the feedrate to 3000mm/min @ 15000 RPM.

I used 10mm two flute HSS tools from GARR for this job, a ballnose for the topography, then a flat end for cutting out the part.

The results where good! At 2,5 mm stepover, the toolpaths are clearly visible.

I continued to use the same file for testing in wood. This was made using only adaptive clearing with a HSS 1FL6 from norswiss.