Milling About

Overview

In this Unit we learned more about milling and how to mill into different materials including Wax and a thin metal material. This was accomplished through designing chocolate mold to mill into wax and a design to mill into a Dog Tag. This project had its challenges. Weather it was a file corrupting or the very specific requirements for how to mill a Dog Tag it wasn't an easy unit. These challenges were overcame by a lucky save for the file and just straight perseverance for the Dog Tag. Along with Milling their was also the task of designing a box as a singular piece.

Dog Tag

Reference Drawing

This is my beautiful reference drawing for what I wanted my Dog Tag have milled onto it.

Corel Design of Dog Tag

This is what my design for what I was going mill came out in Corel Draw. It looks exactly as I drew up and looks identical to its counterpart.

I sadly do not have the final results of this step becuase I lost the dog tag

Milling Dog Tag Video

IMG_0253.MOV

Wax Chocolate Mold

Reference Image

Once again you can see how great of an artist I am through my perfect visual of what me and my partner wanted to mill into the wax. We used his reference drawing instead of mine.

Fusion 360

This is what the final design looked like in fusion. It is a Hershey Kiss mold which is nice because while it is simple it still has difficult elements allowing for a good mold.

Milling Videos

IMG_0283.MOV

This is a simulation of what the milling machine will do to the wax block based on the milling path me and my partner put into Fusion.

IMG_0287.MOV

This is the video showing the actual milling process itself but sped up since it takes very long to Mill.

Final Results

Chocolate Box

Corel Design

My final fantastic reference drawing and my design in Corel Draw. They are almost Identical. The Corel design has different colors: Blue for scoring, red for cutting and black for engraving.

Final Product

This was the final product for the chocolate box. Its made of cardstcok. Only had to test cut once and it came out great. Everything is as big as it should be and the lid covers the box correctly.

Laser Cutting Box video

IMG_0269.MOV

Milling Workflow

1. Turn on the Othermill milling machine.

If it doesn’t beat use the red switch on the side to pop the port out
If the Spoil Board is damaged ask for help to get it cleaned up
Make sure the frame is installed if necessary and to remove it unscrew the bolts on the side
Make sure both of the rings are on the belts

2. Open Bantam Tools Desktop Milling Machine Software.

Start by going into initial setup to import the design
Put the material size of the design in through the material settings

3. Load your material onto the Othermill machine bed. Ensure it's secured.

Clean off the bed with a cleaning wipe before placing the PCB down
Do this by placing stripes of ___ onto the back of the board and placing it down firmly to the bed

4. In the Bantam software, import the Gerber and Drill files you exported from KiCAD.

Do this through initial setup and from their Milling tools
When placing the bit into the machine, make sure you are safe for the bits ends are sharp
To secure the bit use the Wrenches on top to loosen it and your fingers to tighten it

5. Define your milling tool and set the required parameters like feed rate, plunge rate, etc. based on the material you're using and the intricacies of your design.

6. Preview the milling paths in the software. Ensure there are no issues or overlaps.

7. Begin milling. The software will guide the Othermill machine to carve out your PCB design.

During the milling process at the beginning make sure to watch out for errors and if any occur press the red button, check for errors and if needed get a teacher

8. Once complete, remove the PCB from the milling bed and carefully clean up any debris.

Put the bit back from where found as well
Make sure you also put the wrenches back to the top of the machine

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