Computer-controlled machining

Week 7

Preparing the design

For this assignment, I'll push my Fusion360 skill a little further. First, I had to go buy some material for our awesome 4'X8' CNC. It was hell !!! I don't have a car and I had to carry a whole 5'X8' sheet by feet and it was about -35°C outside! I go over it by needed to share this. I had another challenge too. I began this assignment very excited and wanted to make the coolest thing ever. A small table that would be used bending technique so it curves to make the shape of it. I began to draw it and everything went very well. But as my computer don't have a graphic card, at some point the design was too complex and the software shut down all the time. I lost a day trying to make it work and we all know that missing a day in the FacAcademy timing mean not being able to make it on time !! Here's the result.

After wasting so much time on in I decided that I needed to keep going with this assignment and decided to make something very simple. At the end, the goal is to be able to operate de big milling machine more than anything else. Here's the design I made. First, I made a sphere in Fusion360 and then I cut the top and bottom part with the offset technic that I presented in 3D pinting week. After this, I exported it in Slider for Fusion360 and set the slicing. Slicing for Fusion360 will generate de plans considering all the setting you give it. It's very cool ! Here's the result :

I love Fusion360 and the slicer a lot !! Here's some other projects I made with it !

Cutting the pieces

Now that I have the plans, I needed to cut them. Using the CNC wasn't that hard. Well, I received a training session by the CNC company where we bought the thing just before. It was fresh in my mind. Here are some pictures of the machine I used.

Here's the steps I made with the owner software and some picture of it :

  • Import the file (In this case, I prepared a .dxf file because it works better)
  • Choose the tool settings
  • Set the size of the material
  • Prepare the cutting sheet
  • Validate the path
  • Validate the Gcode produced
  • After having set the software part, it's time to qualibrate the machine :

  • Place the material
  • Place the right bit
  • Open the succion valves where the materials will be placed
  • Set the 0 point in X, Y, Z
  • Bring the code to the machine
  • Star and look !
  • After this, I only had to assembled it. I need to say that the fitting was very but very good ! It is press fit just enough that I could assembled it easily but do not fall appart.