Progressing with the screwdriver case

Here is the latest progression on the screwdriver set. Now that i had made one functional prototype of the drawer, the time had come to produce five of the new improved versions.

After generating toolpaths, the parts where milled from plywood and aluminium. The plywood parts where to be milled from both sides, so three wooden dowels where used to ensure that the material lined up from both sides.

Then, once i had five aluminium frames, and five wooden trays, i had to begin drilling the holes for the small brass screws that hold the frame in place. As much as i enjoy operating the CNC machines, there are something special about forming material by hand. Therefore, grabbed my toolbox, and began the process of marking, drilling and countersinking the holes.

After ensuring that the screws did infact fit in the aluminium frames, i mounted the frames to the wood. Using one of my favourite tools, a brass hammer i made my self some time ago, i hammered the frames onto the wooden trays.

Then using another of my selfmade tools, the small parallel clamp, i secured the two pieces together while i predrilled the hole for the screws. Then, i mounted the piece on a small board with a welding clamp, and inserted the threee screws.

As i had not used Bitrafs lasercutter for quite a while, i decided to produce a temporary rack to store the drawers in when i am not working on them. After some thinking, i came up with a quick design in Fusion 360. I took roughly half an hour to cut.

Thats it for now, the next thing i will have to do to finish this project, is to lasercut the wooden inserts for the aluminium frames. Then i will need to cut the final wood cabinet in wich the drawers will sit.

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: