8. Computer controlled machining¶

for this week I have to design, build and assemble something big.

I’ve decided to build a cat shelter for stray cats in the neighborhood.

so first I designed it then scaled down the design and tested it with laser cutting then I built the original design and all can be seen in the following steps.

Designing¶

I used fusion 360 to design the cat shelter like following:

setting parameters.

designing side sheet

designing top sheet

designing front and back entrances and finishing the design.

then after that I projected all the faces as 2d sketches and eported them as dxf.

then I scaled them down to test it with laser cutter.

Laser cutting.¶

I imported the design to the laser cutting app and set it to MDF wood with 3mm thickness. then I started cutting.

then I assembled it and I was satisfied with the results.

CNC Milling (Shopbot):¶

First I imported the design to Vcarve then added the milling bit for cutting

then I added tabs (3mm) to the design for safety reasons.

then I generated 2 toolpaths, one for cutting the outside and one to cut the inside designs.

and I put the depth to 12 mm and 3 passes each.

then the resulted toothpaths looked like

then i saved the tooth toolpaths

then I set up the shopbot by adding the milling bit then by placing and moving the shopbot head to the origin X,y axis by using the keypad to control shopbot movement manually, then I used the calibration metal sheet for zeroing the z axis.