8. Computer controlled machining¶

This week I worked on building a mobile storage box for nurse.

Research¶

During the summer 2020 the fablab was busy to build stuffs for hospitals, doctors, retirment house. One of them was a mobile storage box for nurses working in a retirement residence. Several students were interested in building research and development teams. All the communication was focused on the Discord platform. Discord

I helped them in order to simplify their solutions. When the University authorised us to visit the place. We came back with a lot of users’feedbacks. It has to be easy to move if necessary. The alzheimer’s people must have no access. Nurses has to get new suit quickly, materials easily. A basket to throw away their suit after working.

sketching

The students were not able to come to the lab, so my colleague and I built the first prototype. first prototype

and we fixed a lot of things such as:

3d modelling¶

I get back on the project and I designed it on onshapde. I also created parameters for the thickness, length , width, axes…

You can look for the option in the search tools Variable function

You can type your parameters:

storage box front perspective view

storage box /no front door/ front perspective view

I designed the project in order to work both: in a lab and in an industrial process. I used a lot the boolean function in order to get quickly the assemblY.

boolean function

I use the “export as dxf/dwg” in order to get the tool paths.

¶

N=1000xVc /TTxd

Symbols	Unity
Vc	m/min
N	tr/min
d	mm

a=Nxfxz

Symbols	Unity
a	mm/min
N	tr/min
f	mm/tr/teeth
z	number of tooth

a=2400mm/min

N=14000 tr/min (maximum frequency of the shopbot)

V carve pro.¶

To make the file for the shopbot, I use VCarve Pro software. First I imported all the dxf file

routing paths

After that, I just need to select all the parts and select the tool I would like to use. Here, I choose a upcut tool of 6mm diameter. the softaware will generate all the paths for the machine. I will just add some tabs ta maintain the parts during the production.

I have selected 5.5 , 8 , 10mm drills to make the linear holes and I measured the difference between the end of the tool and the main surface.

drilling difference

Probe¶

2 - Milling the project¶

To mill my project, I use the shopbot. After putting the tool and the material into the machine, I’ve made the zero for the Z axis using the dedicated tool. I have also verified that my design fits into the machine before launching the milling.

probe