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, 4 February 2014

Last of the Butterflies!

The last portion of the "Bullets to Butterflies" exhibit were necklaces!
Saba, the artist, wanted us to fabricate butterflies from empty shell casings.
The empty casings were picked up from a local shooting range.
I drew up a butterfly set of wings in Aspire, and nested and toolpathed them out on the sheet.
We cut them from a sheet of .040 brass, using a tapered 1/16" ball nose cutter. I originally started with a 1/8" endmill, but it didn't quite get all the detail. I didn't want to chance my 1/16" endmill, so the tapered ballnose did the trick!
The last thing to do was punch the hole for the chain in the bullet, and solder on the wings. Saba actually did the soldering, which was pretty funny on the first 2, but she quickly got the hang of it!

We attended the local showing at the art gallery on Saturday, and the work by all three artists, Saba Syed, Huma Durrani, and Unaiza Karim was fabulous!
It was a great afternoon for both Jody and I!
8)
JWO




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