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

Were cruiser tablin' now!

Due to the short timeline on these cruiser tables, we had to head out and get the material ourselves. Our plastic supplier delivers Tuesday's and Thursday's, so we missed the deadline for delivery today. Also, the place we got the actual tables themselves don't deliver, period. It was HOT today, 40deg celcius to be exact, and the air-con in the van quite working. That sucked!
We did make it to the shop in the end, at around 3 pm, and got straight to work. Jody worked on marking, and pre-drilling the holes in the table tops

She's so little, that the drill looks huge!

We went with black pvc in the end. This will really make the shelves look good, especially with the silver cans. Our Techno cnc worked away, while I had the 'awesome' job of cutting all the aluminum tubing on the table saw.

By 9:30, all the tubing and shelves were cut! That was exactly where I wanted to be, so that was good.

I decided not to have the Techno cnc cut the pockets for the tubing and PETG covers, at this point. If the pockets aren't exactly the right depth, and exactly the same, it will spell disaster for the assembly. My sacrificial board on the router is getting a little worn now, and I'm sure it's not dead flat with all the cuts in it.
As both sides of the shelves get pockets in them, I decided to jig them one at a time. I'll run the file, then flip the part. This will make sure they're all the same.
The table tops are also getting a vinyl graphic cut in black, and we'll tackle that tomorrow.
I really kind of like this job now that I'm into it. Usually production style work bores me, but I kinda dig this!
8)
JO

It's a treasure chest........of beer?

All of the beer tap handles got shipped out today. Not gonna be sad that's gone. They were a bit more work than I thought!
It seems we've hit a strange brewery streak at the moment. Tomorrow we hit the next job pretty hard. 20 aluminum cruiser tables for a live event. Oh yeah, they're due Thursday. You heard me, Thursday.
This afternoon a red roadcase showed up at the shop. I helped unload it, and we got it inside. It was fairly big to say the least:

I knew what was inside of it, but sometimes, even though you know, it can be a surprise!

Holy Moly!

600 wide mouth beer cans!

They were all empty though.  We're going to cut shelves that will hold the cans, and mount the assembly to the centre  leg of each table. There will be four shelves per unit, and they'll have clear PETG 'tubes' to protect the cans from damage.
We have to head out first thing in the morning to get the table assemblies, as well as the other materials. Thankfully we have Aspire and Techno cnc in our corner, or I'd have turned down this job due to the timeline.

Phew!
8)
JO