Wildcard Week¶
In Bottrop we are already kind of known as the drinking lab and I thought I would keep up with the tradition of building tools to keep you hydrated, so this week I made a simple bottle opener using our metal lasercutter.
Design in Fusion¶
In previous assignments like 3D Scanning and Printing or Computer Controlled Machining I never really left Fusion’s solid design space so I wanted to try and see what the sheet metal tab has to offer.
As usual I started with a basic sketch.
Since I was no longer working with a solid body but rather a virtual metal construction, I had to use the Flange tool to give the sketch a thickness.
The exact thickness is defined via the material parameters.
The Flange tool is not only used to thicken surfaces but also to define where the part is bent.
Besides being a little too boring, a simple sheet of metal with a cutout would probably be too flimsy to be used as a bottle opener.
To give my design more stability, I added two bends on the sides.
After that I filleted the sharp corners.
Next I created a flat pattern.
With the bends flattened out, I got this shape which I exported as a .DXF file. You can find it in the Download section at the bottom of this page.
I then imported the file into RDWorksV8 to convert it into a .plt file, which is also linked in the Download section at the bottom of this page.
Preparing the lasercutter¶
Over at our GS Lasersystems 130130 FL metal lasercutter I started CypCut, the software to prepare 2D designs for cutting, which immediately prompted me to home the machine.
Since I exported my file with guide lines for the bends I wanted to only engrave those instead of cutting them, so I marked the lines and assigned them to a different layer.
In the layers menu I then selected different parameter presets for cutting and engraving a 1,5mm aluminium sheet.
With the parameters done, I placed said sheet into the machine.
Next I moved the toolhead over to where I wanted to cut, and made sure that there was enough space by running a frame command.
After closing and locking the machine’s door, I ran another frame command just to be sure and started the cutting job.
The job went off without a hitch and left me with a beautiful little piece of metal.
There were some small but rather sharp bits left around the sides so I gathered a file, sandpaper and a deburring tool to get rid of those.
Much better… now the bottle opener only opens bottles instead of the user’s hand.
Bending the part¶
I loaded the piece into our bending machine and tried bending it to a little over 90°.
Turns out aluminium is kind of brittle so I had to redo the whole thing with steel.
Deburring the steel part was kind of a pain and left some pretty deep scratch marks on the surface so I borrowed one of Lars’ super fine sanding pads and gave the whole thing a bit of a brushed look.
Back to the bending machine I went.
This time it didnt break.
And that concludes this week’s contribution to our ongoing mission of keeping you hydrated.
See you next time!