Quarter One 

Manual Machining 

For the First assignment/challenge we were taught about manual milling and the manual lathe. To start off we watched a lot of videos on the basics of machining, and then leaned into more videos based on manual machining. The first videos were about GD&T where we were taught about thou (a thousandths of an inch), how to properly hold and use calipers and micrometers, and what all of the symbols meant on a sketch. After we watched those video we went onto the floor to dimensional inspection for an in person experience with inspection and GD&T. We learned how to read a PCM and how to inspect parts, I was with the mentor Shawn. The videos that were based on more manual machining taught us about how to be safe with a manual machines and how to use them. Our first and second challenge were the manual mill and the manual lathe, on theses machines we had mentors to help us. These mentors were Kong and Jacob, for the manual mill we had Kong help us with the challenge and Jacob helped us with the lathe challenge. All we had to do for the manual mill challenge was square a vise and then square an aluminum block. To square the vise we had to use an dial indicator and sweep it back and forth on the vise and make sure that the dial indicator didn't move to much. Then squaring the stock all we had to do was use a face mill on the top and bottom of the block to make sure that they were flat, then we clamped those sides in the vise and used an end mill to cut the rest of the sides. Kong guided me through doing it once and then watched as I did one by my self. The next challenge was the manual lathe with Jacob, for this challenge we had to face and turn some stock in a 3 and 4 jaw chuck. Jacob taught me how to face and turn an aluminum rod and he told me to always cut in small intervals and to not take a lot at once. He also taught me how to set up a 3 and 4 jaw chuck. 

Dimensional Inspection and GD&T Page: https://sites.google.com/view/nathancorradi/dimensional-inspection

Manual Mill Page: https://sites.google.com/view/nathancorradi/manual-mill?authuser=0

Manual Lathe Page: https://sites.google.com/view/nathancorradi/manual-lathe?authuser=0

2D Machining

The second assignment/challenge was about water jet and 2D parts. On water jet we had Tera as our mentor she taught us how to use and maintain it. We started off with learning how to check the water pressure of the machine and making sure its where you want it. Then we were shown how to load a part and to make sure its the correct one before you load it, and then find the program on the machine. Now we learned how to set home for all x, y, and z on the water jet, after your first part is finished you take it to get a first part check if it is good the rest of your parts should look similar to it. In-between parts we were taught how to ream and how to debur. Reaming is really easy, its just like a drill, and deburring we got to use a deburring tool, 90, air disc sander, and a die grinder. For the challenge we had to design a 2D flatpack design that turns 3D that we could technically do on the water jet. I decided on a 12 sided die. After I designed it in fusion I figured out how it would be folded together, we printed it out on paper and traced it onto poster board, then cut that out and folded it like how I planed to and taped it together. 

2-D Machining Page: https://sites.google.com/view/nathancorradi/water-jet?authuser=0

3-Axis CNC Machining

The last assignment/challenge of this unit was 3-axis cnc machines. For four days I went out onto the floor with a mentor so I could learn the basics of a 3-axis CNC machine. The first day I learned how to use MDI to change out a tool, how to take a tool out of the machine, how to make sure that your tool is up to date, how to get the g-code for a part into the CNC machine, and how to know how the program wants you to load the part. The second day was about tools and tool holding, we tested our tools to make sure it was correct and up to date. Then we made two different types of tools, a collet and shrink holder. Day three I learned how to use a probe and all the different ways to find the x, y, and z offsets. The fourth day we did maintenance, we cleaned up chips, cleaned the inside of the spindle, cleaned the tool changer, and we checked the air pressure and oil levels. We also checked the coolant levels and learned how to use a refractometer, and we also fully cleaned out the coolant tank and replaced the coolant. The challenge for the 3-axis CNC machine was we had to design a part to be machined on a CNC. I designed my part in the design tab of fusion then used the manufacture tab to plan out a cutting process for my part. I then was able to get a simulation of my part being cut, and now I was able to get my part cut. After I machined my part I was able to give it to quality and they checked my cut part against my part in Autodesk Fusion. 

CNC Machining Page: https://sites.google.com/view/nathancorradi/cnc-machining?authuser=0

Quarter Two 

Lean Manufacturing

In lean manufacturing we started out by watching videos on what lean is and why its important, I learned that lean is most likely one of the bests way to identify and reduce waste in the work place by identifying the sources of wastes and improving them. Lean is important because with out lean the world would be a lot slower because of all the wastes that would be happening. Next we learned the two types of lean and what is different between them People centric lean have people being the reason and how to make them more comfortable using lean. Profit centric is the have money be the reason to use lean and is about making the most money no matter what. After that we talked about the importance of lean towards automation and industry. I learned that lean is how to get everything fast and efficient and that's what automation is based off. If your process isn't lean then you can't have automation. 

Next we talked about about situations that I have helped make something more lean in the workplace. I helped the Skills Inc dimensional inspection by designing and 3D printing stamp covers for the stamps they use to mark a first part check as good. The reason that I was asked to help was because they move around a lot and bump into things all the time and the stamp cover gets knocked off and lost, then their stamps starts to dry out and then they would have to get another one. Instead of buying a new stamp every time they lost a cover I could just design a cover that could just get printed and use that, so that's what I did, it took a few tries to get it just right but I got there in the end. 

We then learned what the lean house is and what it does: It is an organization of all your processes and it lets you organize your workplace.

What is KAIZEN is and why it is important: It is continuous improvement of the workplace and how to improve the workplace for others.

3M's and why they are important: They are Muda, Mura, and Muri and they mean waste, imbalance, and overloading. They are important because you use them to prevent waste imbalance and overloading. 

The 7 lean wastes: Overproduction, Waiting, Defects, Motion, Transportation, Inventory, Over-processing. 

Then we used the 2-second improvement to plan how we would fix one of your lean wastes I chose inventory (We have a lot of old junk in the garage, so when your looking for something specific you have to tear down everything.): My plan was me and my family would clean the garage of any garbage we don't need and organize it using totes and racks that we have.  

My Lean Basics page:https://sites.google.com/view/nathancorradi/lean-basics 

CNC Lathes 

For CNC Lathes we were instructed to CAD a fusion 360 model for a CNC lathe then CAM it out and make the part. I decided to make a bullet for my part, we had to have live tooling a center bore and it had to be 3 inches long with the max of a 1 inch diameter.

 Before I ran my actual part I did a graphical run on the Haas pendent to look for any errors in my code, after the graphical run with no errors we moved onto a dry run. For the dry run we just moved the stock all the way back into the chuck, do when we press go it doesn't actually cut the material so we can insure that everything is in tolerance and doesn't do anything we don't want it to. During the dry cut we noticed that the drill was acting like a live tool, so I went back and looked at my drill I had in fusion and it was checked off as a live tool. Fusion had the tool automatically on live tool, so I had to fix that and my dry run was looking good. 

Then I went to and actual run for my part I was told that I should mess overriding with the spindle speed and feed rate to make sure that everything runs smoothly. Even though I fixed the drill from being a live tool I was also long and not very rigid so when it went to drill into my bullet and make a center bore it shifted and went in twisted. A solution that I could come up with is to get a shorter drill and have it be more rigid so it doesn't shift next time. My bullet also broke off early before I could get the part cut off on there, this was expected because of how small and fragile my part is at the tip, but I could try to prevent it from falling off by instead of having the back half of the bullet being cut in one toolpath I could have it in two instead.

My CNC Lathe Page: https://sites.google.com/view/nathancorradi/cnc-lathe 

Robotics

For Robotics we started out reading and watching videos about robot, I learned about the two different types of robots flexible and specialized robots. 

Flexible Robots: Preform a wide range of functions.

Specialized Robots: Preform a single dedicated function.

We learned about robot safety and how humans and robots don't mix well, and that robots will not avoid you if you are in the way.

I then learned about two ways to program robots online the teach pendant and the tracing method.

Teach Pendant: With the teach pendant the came with the robot you move the robot and mark coordinates in the space around the robot for your program. 

Tracing Method: Move the robot by hand on the exact track you want for the program. 

I also learned about the disadvantages and advantages of online programming.

Disadvantages: Costly in system downtime, difficult to program long repetitive task.

Advantages: There is immediate feedback, used for tasks that require manual manipulation of the robots, easier to program complex task.

I was taught about offline programming.

Offline Programming: You use a program where you have the robots, the space around the robots.

I was also taught the advantages and disadvantages

Advantages: It allows for easy modification, reduces programming time, you can prove out robot movements, you can make the program while the robot is machining elsewhere. 

Disadvantages: May not account for real-world conditions, difficult to program tasks that require human intuition, requires DAN models of the robots, requires the operator to have knowledge with the software.

I learned about the Tool center point on a robot arm and how to set that up, by getting the dimensional position of the robot, the orientation , the payload, and the center of gravity.

There are 5 human-robot interactions

Fenced Cell: Little to no human robot interaction.

Coexisting Cell: Little to no human robot interaction but close proximity.

Sequential collaboration cell: Robots and humans performing alternating steps of a process with close  proximity but still isolated from one another.

Cooperative cell: Robots and humans performing work on the same process step at the same time. 

Responsive Collaboration Cell: Robots responding in real time to human action decisions or even gestures, the interaction is dynamic and adaptive.

I got to mess around coding a robot, and I made a loop that looped three times then went to an up right position by moving the robot taking the coordinates then moving to the next point.

 I got to have the robot do a connect the dots puzzle, we used a pen attachment on the end of the robot arm I did this using the teach pendant. 

After I learned how to program the robot I was tasked with designing and printing a fixture that would hold grippers I roughed out a design using calibrated cad models of the grippers and the end of the robot. Our first print was a test print to see how well the fixture would work we saw that the grippers fix great, the screws that held the grippers in the fixture worked, the only problem was that the screws that held the fixture to the robot were longer than expected so it was wobbly on the robot.

We re-designed the fixture this time getting the bottom screws correct and printed it. The second and final print worked perfectly.

After we made the fixture I was then asked to design extended gripper arms that would pick up my 12 sided die that I made. I designed them to pick up items like a claw would, I then test printed them to see if the die wouldn't actually fall out when picked up and it didn't it was also easy to drop without having to open the claws to much.

To make it so that I could easily pick up the dice and place it in the same place easily I redesigned the grippers. Unfortunately it dice would get stuck in the grippers when I placed it, so I fixed this by cutting off the front of the grippers to let the dice out easier.  

Robotics Page: https://sites.google.com/view/nathancorradi/robotics

Quarter Three

4-Axis

This project I needed to design something that we could machine using a 3 axis CNC machine with a rotatory table attached making it 4 axis, that fit in an 12" by 3.5" by 2.5" block. I was using a window tabbing method (making an outline of the part and using built-in tabs to hold the part stable) my part secure while milling. 

This was my first attempt at making my 4-axis design that I scraped pretty early on because it was too wide for the window method. Also, it just wasn't looking how I imaged it would. 

My second attempt was a wand, this attempt was much better than my first because it worked well with the window method. Unfortunately, this would not be very possible to machine the middle twist, the handle, and anywhere that was smooth because I was limited to having the rotation at the bottom of the stock I couldn't get into the curved spots with out crashing the machine. 

The third attempt was the finale attempt, and I had to get rid of all the smooth parts because I couldn't find a way to machine it without it looking weird. This wand also does great with the window method. With this design I will be able to actually mill this part fully because it is more straight forward than the previous designs while still looking like a wand.  

To make sure that everything in the program was a realistic as possible I designed the fixture that we used that held my wand, so that I could tell if any endmills ran into the fixture and prevent it from happening.

This if the first four toolpaths of my operation in the simulation. Where it is facing and getting the stock ready for the roughing toolpath. In these toolpaths the simulation says that it is "crashing" but it is just cutting into extra stock that I left at the bottom of my part, so its not actually crashing and this is according to plan.  The next four are roughing and finish passes before it starts so clean up everything else, It cleans the part pretty well but it leaves a few imperfections. Which will be smoothed out in the next passes. After roughing and finishing the main part of my wand I needed to smooth out the tip of the wand. Smoothing out the handle only took 8 tool paths and there were no problems in the simulation. 

Before I can start to run the wand I need to make a dovetail on the bottom of the stock so that it can hold onto the rotary fixture. I hand wrote the  G-code that would be used to mill the dovetail. 

Before we actually start running the program we need to run a graphic run, to make sure that nothing will go wrong. Unfortunately something did go wrong in the graphic run, and it said that the face mill was going to cut the fixture (which we obviously don't want). I then had to go back to my program and I found out what the problem was on my setup the point where everything was taken off of was on top of the fixture instead of the center of the fixture, this made the face mill cut closer to the middle than it should have. 

Nothing went wrong during the run everything went as planed, and my wand came out how I designed it.

All that was left to do was take it out and debur the tabs off.

4-Axis Page: https://sites.google.com/view/nathancorradi/4-axis-machining

5-Axis

For this project I wanted to mill a 20 sided die (D20). First I had to design a D20, I did this using 3D sketch in fusion 360 I first made a pentagon and had all the edges meet at a point in the middle above the pentagon. Then I had a line go below the pentagon and made a second one, then I connected them and had the bottom pentagons angles meet at a point below that pentagon. I made all the edges the same length. After I made the sketch of the D20 I patched all the sides then used the surface stitch to made all the patches solid. 

Once I finished designing my die I added a Penta Pocket Nc, because that was the machine we are using to mill the die. Then I used a construction plane to make a sketch in the middle of the die, so I could make the out line where the endmill would cut. I did this 6 times to cover all the sides of the die.

Now I moved on to the machining tab in fusion to make the toolpaths for my D20. For all my toolpaths I changed the surface speed to 300 ft/min and cutting feedrate to 10 in/min because that's the safest settings for the pocket Nc. 

These are the toolpaths for my D20

Now that all of the tool paths are finished I postprocessed them into g code and instead of just going and running the program I put the g-code into the Penta Simulator (https://sim.pocketnc.com/). Fortunately I caught that the Penta simulator had the stock not in the middle of orientation of the machine even though it was in the fusion simulator. So, I want and checked the where the origin was and as i suspected it was off of the middle of orientation for the machine. 

Instead of restarting form the beginning I fixed this problem by using the move tool to move everything to the correct position. I did this by first making a sketch point where I wanted the sketches to go then I made patches of the sketches I needed to move then used the move tool point to point to move the patches by clicking the origin point (where the sketch was) and the target point (where the sketch needed to be).  Lastly I then projected the patches to be the new sketches. 

Now when I tested the g-code in the Penta simulator everything looked how it looked in the fusion simulator and there were no problems.

Now it was time to actually mill the die, once everything was figured out in the simulators the milling part went by easy without much difficulty. After my code was done running the D20 was left on a tab that I had to cut off and grind down. 

5-Axis Page: https://sites.google.com/view/nathancorradi/5-axis-machining

Additive

This is a button that I designed and printed using TPU (a flexi filament used for D3 printing). I used coil tool in fusion to make the spring that lets the button come back up. To print this I needed to change the nozzle temperature to 240 so that the filament would melt and come out he nozzle. I also had to slow down the printer to allow time for the filament to come out of the nozzle. I also changed the wall loops and top surface layers because this button is more vertical I wanted to have the walls be stronger and the top layers didn't need to be so thick. 

This is a hammer fidget spinner that I took inspiration from and designed it by my self in fusion and printed it. The hammer is only 2 inches tall and the spinning part only has a 20 thousands gap and it spins good still. 

This is a print that I used for different colors of PLA to make a little robot that I found online to use as a base to make the robot in fusion.

This project I made a two way sign of a game I play "Warhammer 40K" I and using two different filaments I used PLA for the base and PETG for the letters. To actually print with the PETG I needed to raise the nozzle temp to 255 and I had to slow down the printer to 50 mm/s so it doesn't clog the nozzle. 

Additive Print Page: https://sites.google.com/view/nathancorradi/additive-prints