When I lent my services to a collegue who was working on a film about 12 years ago, I was introduced to the world of cnc. I remember watching this huge machining centre milling out a slab of mdf and turning it into a fantastic set of gears. I knew that it would have taken me hours to achieve the same thing with traditional power tools. I decided then that I would invest in a cnc router for my own business Oxenham Design. At that time I could turn on a computer, but even to check email seemed like a crazy set of operations. I persevered and learned every piece of relevant software I could get my hands on. I am now fortunate enough to be using Vectric's ASPIRE software, and Techno cnc routers, which has helped us to create some amazing projects, both in part, or in full. I thought that this blog would be a great place to share "behind the scenes" adventures with the software, materials and equipment we use, as well as the projects we build.

Tuesday 13 March 2012

More Like Megalodon!

I knew the shark dispenser was big, but it wasn't until we started running the files on our Techno cnc that I came to grips with it. As I am the one who modeled this from scratch, I was very aware of the 74" height, but as pieces started to appear out of the foam, they did kinda take me by surprise! Enough to go back and check my measurements a few times.
This is the top of the lower jaw, you can see the 3/4" masking tape holding the slices together while the urethane glue dries.
I have decided to re-toolpath some of these files with a bigger step-over. I started at 9% in Aspire, but decided to jump it up to 15%. I have decided it will be faster to clean-up the steps with a sanding sponge than let the smaller stepover run for extended times.
I got the outer left and right sides of the head machined and assembled. I really like seeing something I've modeled in the computer, coming together in real life.
Tomorrow will be a long day, waiting for multiple sheets to be cut before I have enough pieces to start assembling.

Any way you slice it though, these are some big shoes to fill:

8)
JO

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