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.

Wednesday 3 April 2013

Cartoon racecar build continues

I started machining the body parts for the racecar when I got into the shop today. The deadline is pretty good for this, so I haven't had to kill myself on the build. I also have a lot of computer work to get done at the same time, so I toolpathed the parts with a pretty small stepover. I don't need the small Techno router for anything else at the moment, so I figured it could mill away while I got my computer work done!
 I've been doing the cnc thing for a while now, most times it goes really well. However, I made the basic of basic mistakes on this! I assumed my HDU was 2" thick when I was toolpathing the model in Aspire. It actually calipered out at 1.960", which means the slices are going to need a bit of manual massaging after they're glued up. I HATE having to "tweak" something the router has worked on, especially if I had payed attention in the beginning. Stoooopid Jamie!

I also started machining the sidewalls of the front tires when the body parts were finished. I cut these from 1/2" black pvc. The tires will actually be layered flats of pvc, this will let me rabbet the edge of the layers to achieve a basic "tread"

I didn't put anything together today, but will do that in the morning. The computer stuff is the priority for the rest of this evening!
8)
JO

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2 comments:

  1. Mad Scientist4 April 2013 at 07:07

    So, with the 2->1.960 error, what would you have done differently?

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  2. jamie oxenham4 April 2013 at 07:26

    I would have set the material in Aspire to 1.960" slices. Oh well, it gives me a chance to spend some "Sanding time" with the little car :)

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