John O'Keefe

Week 6 - Make Something Big

PartWorks 3D Interface - Material Size and Margins Found a chair in the Sketchup 3D warehouse and extracted this half chair leg. The idea is to make 2 (mirrored) halves and pin/join them together (could try cutting one in a thick enough piece, then flipping it for the mirror so it could cut from 1 solid piece). Exported as a .stl and opened in PartWorks, then chose from preconfigured orientations and laid the chair leg flat. Since the model height is below the material height (pink insulation foam), 'Depth of Model Below Surface' was lowered to .415", and 'Cut Plane' adjusted to height of model - 1.585".

Roughing Toolpath The Roughing Toolpath cuts away material (generally with a bigger bit) prior to the the finer, more precise, Finshing Path. You can see the result of the stepped rough passes (under the actual toolpaths in red) in the close up.

ShopBot Console Opened up the ShopBot Console/.sbp file made in PartWorks. Machine needs to be turned on (breaker, machine on, and spindle on (using key) and x, y, and z need to be zeroed/homed. Typing 'K' open up the keypad which is use to direct/orient the spindle.

ShopBot in Action Took a couple back and forths between PartWorks and the ShopBot to get the x, y in the right spot, and the spindle at the right height to start cutting - without a roughing pass, spindle blasts right through material straight to the model height. The perimeter around the model (selected in PartWorks/Material and Margins) was a little too tight, so the spindle rubbed the against the foam when it reached lower depths. There should be plenty of material cut away from the base prior to the Finishing Toolpath.

Scanned Chair

Will attempt to build a scanned chair with artifacts from the scanning process. Could slice model and stack slices, but my aim is to piece the chair together from individually milled (possibly mirrored) solid solid pieces.