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, 2 April 2013

F1 and other stuff

I exploded the parts off the racecar in Hexagon. The reason for doing this is so I can bring them into Aspire separately for machining. Aspire fills in any undercuts on imported geometry, and this allows me to machine the tricky parts as separate units. Even though I modeled both sides of the car, I only actually need one side.
Once the body was centered in the material on all 3 axis, I just mirrored it for the other side. Sometimes in Hex, things can get tweaked on only one side of the model by mistake (operator error for sure!) Mirroring the model in Aspire keeps both sides of the car exactly the same.

Then it was just a matter of using Aspires' slicing feature to cut the model into the 2" thick slabs we'll be cutting it from.
With all the parts ready to go, I nested them in Aspire to get the best material yield I could.

I'll start cutting these tomorrow when I get to the shop.
On another note....
When we were in New York at Techno, we cut the demonstration piece to go over different toolpath options.
A fun little piece with the "Awesomeness" meter maxed out!
We painted it almost entirely with the Rustoleum Metallic Accents paint. I love this stuff! The opacity is really good for a waterbased metallic, and the dry-time/ inter-mixability is so flexible!

Well box this guy up and send it down to Dee and Roy at Techno for them to have, a thank-you of sorts, for having us down!

8)
JO





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