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The machine we will be learning this project is the cnc machine, specifically our shopbot. While we have used cnc machines before, like the 3d printers, laser cutters, and the milling machine, the shopbot is the largest cnc machine the FabLab has. Its main purpose is to cut wood, which is why it needs such a large area. CNC machines work in tandem with CAD, or computer aided design, to design and then make your part. Shopbots can use two bits, routers or drills. Router bits are used for engraving and not cutting the whole way through a material, while the drill bits are made for the opposite.
Before starting with the shopbot, we had to first get out wood pieces cut to size. They needed to be exactly 11 by 13, and we would do this by planing the wood to make it flat then cutting with the table saw to make it the right dimensions. The height did not matter, but all of ours ended up being within a couple hundreths of an inch of .82"
We first cut the wood into the 11 by 13 inch parts. we probably should of done the second part first, as its hard to do with the smaller parts, but to do this part we went onto the saw and cut it into parts roughly 40 inches so that we had 3 pieces.
IMG_2621.MOVWe then used this machine to somewhat square out the edges
IMG_2618.MOVAfter squaring the edges we cut the boards by 13 and 11 inches. This is where I made my mistake, as I accidentally cut my already 13 by 11 board into 11 by 11, with a 2 by 11 piece cut off.
IMG_2619.MOVSome of my final cuts, making sure the smaller board was exactly 11 by 11, and attempting to make sure the same for the much smaller piece
IMG_2628.MOVAfter preparing our wood, our next step was to read about the CNC machine, we then started designing our board. We designed in CorelDRAW, then imported that to Aspire to make the toolpaths.
This was my design in corelDRAW, which would be multiple layers that descended in height to allow me to have multiple resin layers with different colors.
Because of my board being cut into 2 pieces, I was the only one able to cut something on the edge of the board, as everyone else had clamps on the edge of their board, but i could cut at where the 2 parts came together and pull them apart to make an edge
After importing it to aspire, i had trouble making the CorelDRAW designs usable with aspire, as aspire works with vectors and how i was importing CorelDRAW into aspire made it impossible to use the design, I fixed this by using the equivalent of CorelDRAW's tracing bitmap tool on aspire to convert to a vector
After bringing the design into aspire, the next biggest challenge would be getting the settings right for the toolpath.
The Job Setup sets the basics for our wood. The wood with both my pieces together is 13x11x.82, which i put into the job size, and the XY Datum Position offset was, because we were using a jig to allow us to not have to nail everyone's boards down, saving time and resources. We used 5.xx and 6.xx as it was the position from the bottom left corner of the shopbot that our bottom left of our board was positioned at on the shopbots.
After finalizing my design, but before cutting I decided to do away with the clear passes as it would of been a 15 minute cut without them, and a hour cut with them. I also did my best in the design so that after cutting the highest, the drill would not do another pass in the highest to save more time, but treating cut areas as empty space instead of treating them like uncut areas.
IMG_2652.MOVWhile using the shopbot, I really didn't do alot and was more guided through, but if i were to do it alone i would of followed the workflow at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AhAVdsYUFlprc9MAQJVx2HSDTGSasBQ13hZn-LVHsx0/edit
IMG_2650.MOVIMG_2651.MOVDuring the cutting, we first did an air cut to see if it was cutting in the right spot, I faced one of my challenges here as my board was not 13 by 11, but rather 12.5 by 11. meaning that my design was a bit off. luckily for me, that just meant that it would cut a bit into my smaller piece, instead of not cutting far enough to the edge in my bigger piece. After doing the air cut, I couldn't be there as i was cutting during my lunch and it rain out, but the full piece was cut perfectly
After cutting, I had my two pieces and was trying to figure out what to do with them. I wanted to do something water related, but also do something to the small piece to make it fit that theme. I decided to go themeless instead, and just have the steps be water descending into a little square late, by adding two wooden squares to the side, shown in the images below
After doing that, i started on my acrylic casing so that the resin didn't leak. I made 3 attempts at no leaks, with the third finally being successful. The first one was for my original design, which was before i added the 2 small blocks. it consisted of 2 walls and a floor, but I never tried it before adding the wooden blocks. For the second attempt, i used cardboard with a waterproof tape on it, but it leaked due to not enough hot glue. for the third, I cut the acylic piece for the bottom, hot glued it in, and then used a small amount of resin, like i was pouring, to glue it to the edges and seal it. That worked perfectly, and stood for all 5 of my pours
First attempt, cutting the acrylic for me and Mason
IMG_2654.MOVsecond attempt, waterproof tape with hot glue
My third attempt, which worked
To pour, I first had to put a thin layer of resin everywhere to seal my wood, as shown in the images by the water stained look of the wood. I had to mix the resin and then add a dye and pour it evenly into one of my layers. to start with the mixing, I accidentally mixed deep pour resin, or resin that is only meant for 1/2 inch and above, into my 1/8 inch layer. It turned out fine, but just took longer to mix and longer to pour. for the rest of the 4 pours, I used tabletop resin, which was easier to mix together and quicker to mix. the only problem I encountered was I put in a little too much blue dye on day 4, which made it much harder to see the earlier pours.
After pouring the resin I:
planed the wood to make it flat
sanded that wood to make it smooth
wet the wood to make it not absorb much more water
sanded the wood to make it smooth
oiled the wood to make it last longer
sanded the wood to make it smooth
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