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Group_Assignment: Week7-Computer-controlled-cutting

VCarve

We had an indepth session with our instructor on setting up materials and the machine.

Our machine is a ShopBot CNC miller.

Our machine has a width (x-axis) of 2240.0mm and a height (y-axis) of 1220.0 mm.

We had an MDF with the same dimensions, which we set up in Job size on teh Job Setup panel. It has a length (z-axis) (thickness) of 18 mm Set up in material (Z).

You also want to set up the origin of the machine for your job in the XY Datum Position box. Next the units we wanted to work with.

FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) field walls

I was organizing the Rwandan FIRST LEGO League Championship this whole month. We had planned FTC scrimmage on the sidelines.

For my assignment, I chose to design the field walls, held together by edge dents, instead of usual nails and brackets that are not up to standard with this week's assignment anyway.

I designed the walls in SolidWorks, and exported DXF files for VCarve. It was just a one piece assembly. The one piece had the same dents on both ends but boss extruded on one edge and cut extruded on the other.

The designing

I designed it and reviewed it with my instructor, Lambert, because we had just one 2240.0mm X 1220.0 mm (same as machine bed) MDF available per student, so I wanted to make sure I make correct tolerances (since I had a very tight room for experimenttion).

N.B: the model I'll document is the last version, I had lots of iterations that I can't find time to document all of them.

The piece has the following dimensions:

Two dents of 40mm was paired with a tooth of 39.60 one sides of the 1066.8mm X 174mm piece. Then I cut the opposite pattern on the opposite end (edge) of the 3D model.

We cononstantly visualized the interactions of the design in an assembly to make sure we are confident with tolerances before machining, which led to above mentioned dimensions.

In the end I couldn't make enough pieces to assemble and make a standard size FTC field, but we could adapt the final pieces and use them at the scrimmage.

The final assembly was 3.128m X 3.128m inside vs the standard 3.66m X 3.66m

I took to VCarve for the final touches: Fillets (bone dents for the corners). The fillets are very important because you want to kind of trick the drill to make sharp inner-corners when it cuts instead of round cuts like it would naturally do due to its round shape and circular motion.