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.

Thursday 21 June 2012

600 beer cans gets tiring

It was another 'over night' build. The deadline was soooooo short on this job. I did ask myself a few times "what was I thinking?", mostly that got asked of myself around 4:30 am! The pvc shelves that our Techno cnc was rabbeting went pretty quick, I barely had time to clean the finished ones up before the next part needed flipping. It was a total production job.
I cut the rabbet with a 1/16" end mill to a depth of .170". I probably could have done it in one pass, but I didn't want to be tracking down a replacement cutter at 3 am! So I did it in 2, but cranked up the feed rate, so it was all good. Aggressive little cutter that guy is.

Jody was tasked (or forced, depending on who you ask!) with mounting the six cans to the shelves. This was pretty simple. She punched a small centre hole in the cans, then used a 1.75" # 10 screw to hold them down. The bottoms of these cans are quite thick, so they locked down pretty hard.
This was the mountain Jody had created around 11:20 pm last night. She was on fire! In fact, she kept saying "I'm on fire!"
This was the sight at 6:30 am. They look really good. The clear PETG tubed covers were a huge pain in the butt to do. In the end, we bent a 90 degree, .160" tab on each end of the strip, made a jig to wrap the strip into a tube, then heat welded the join together. The seam was then covered with a strip of brushed aluminum vinyl. All of the components were then stack assembled using the rabbets to hold the Petg, and the aluminum spacers. The threaded rod that came with the tables was employed to lock it all together. We didn't glue any of it, incase any cans need to replaced, or swapped at a later date for a different style.
By noon, we had them done! By noon, it was also hard to take a straight picture!
I had my friend Joe, man the vinyl cutter and apply all the graphics to the table tops. Joe runs Christoff Creations, a small shop that specializes in vinyl work, so he was up to the task.
They came to pick them up at around 2, then I went home and crashed till 9 pm.
We've got more of these to make, with french graphics, but they're not due until Monday. The good news is we knew about it, and made enough parts for this run as well, so it will really only be an assembly job. I don't think I'm gonna start work till 10 tomorrow, cause I'm the boss!
8)
JO

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