In 2.008 we focus a lot on good machining practice and tool path generation. As an introductory project we make simple paperweights. After much deliberation and "I don't know, what do you want to do?", we made a set of Futurama themed weights.
The most interesting part about his job, in my opinion, is the resulting crater shape. Somewhere along the line the geometry got converted into a mesh of rectangles that approximated the oval depressions. You can see the flats and lines inside the crater in the picture above. That means a software tool simplified the geometry past the tolerances of the machine. It would be neat to look into, but for this project it won't matter. The plastic sheet will be formed on top of the aluminum mold so features that small won't be visible. For anyone interested I went Solidworks --> Parasolid --> Mastercam --> Machine Code. My uneducated guess is that it happened as part of the parasolid generation.
This is what the vacuum formed parts look like after trimming
And here are a couple of completed yo-yos!
Until next time.
This video has three parts, feel free to skip around.
The final pieces turned out pretty nice.
Machining for the yo yo project started last week. I was in charge of one of the thermoform molds. We wanted the moon to have little craters to make the design more interesting. That meant I had to make some 3D tool paths which turns out to be more tricky than I anticipated. With some help from the shop instructors I got it done. With setup and tool changes, the part took about 45 minutes on the mill.
Taking pictures of shiny things with overhead lights is hard.
The most interesting part about his job, in my opinion, is the resulting crater shape. Somewhere along the line the geometry got converted into a mesh of rectangles that approximated the oval depressions. You can see the flats and lines inside the crater in the picture above. That means a software tool simplified the geometry past the tolerances of the machine. It would be neat to look into, but for this project it won't matter. The plastic sheet will be formed on top of the aluminum mold so features that small won't be visible. For anyone interested I went Solidworks --> Parasolid --> Mastercam --> Machine Code. My uneducated guess is that it happened as part of the parasolid generation.
This is what the vacuum formed parts look like after trimming
And here are a couple of completed yo-yos!
Until next time.
