Week Seven.

Computer Controlled Machining.

boy

Intro

The seven week of Fab Academy we learned about our CNC machine we have in our Lab what we call "Shopbot Machine". The machine has a X, Y, and Z axis. For me this machine is a scale up size of the laser cutter with more axis and uses a drill bit instead of a laser. It cuts the material that you designed using vCarve, that's the software that the machine runs on. For this project I used inkscape and then turned it into a PDF to transfer it to vCarve.

Assignment

The Assingment for this week was to create something "BIG" that could be useful.

boy

I had a few problems when thinking of a designg to work on. I first wanted to build a bike rack, but I dont own a bike so it would just collect dust in my basemant, I didn't want to make a table because everyone does it. So I asked my self the perfect question "Is there a problem that needs to solve?", then I started thinking about my dog Chango and how annoying it has been lately that he only wants to sleep in my bed. My first draft was to do a dog house but he's not an outside dog and it gets cold. So my perfect solution for my problem is to make a bed for him. I used Inkscape for my design software and then turned it to a PDF.

Because I'm a perfectionest I decided to take an extra step, I did a scale down version of my dogs bed and cutting it using the laser cutter. The reason for why I decided to cut it this way was because I wasn't sure about the joints on the edges. This joints is what connect each piece to each other without using any nails or screws.

This is the CNC machine we have in AS220 fab lab. It has a X, Y, and Z axis and it uses different drill bits to cut through the material, the software this machine runs is called vCarve.

This is vCarve software, I'm not really familiar with this software and it's use to control the axis of the CNC machine and turn the PDF file into a type of bitmap so the machine could your design.

During week 7 we learnt about Computer-Controlled Machining. It basically is all about CNC and the use of what we have here at AS220, a Shopbot machine. Our particular machine has 3 axis, so it can move with certain precision and a lot of force through the x, y and z axis. What it does, is basically destroying material with a specific shape already designed with a certain software. It uses bits of many possible sizes to achieve this. The software we used depends on the maker's choice until it becomes a PDF. Then, this PDF has to be imported with vCarve which is the software used for some extra editing and finally, the creation of toolpaths.