After a lot of struggles with trying to CAM this part with a somewhat reasonable machine time, we miraculously were able to machine this part on the HASS. It turned out beautifully, and we decided that any adjustments we need to make in the future will be made around this part. i.e. the rest of the yo-yo must be made to fit with this part, since this is the hardest part to adjust/re-do molds.

Problems with Base mold #1:

• parting line in the center of the part, which doesn't look very nice
• the two halves are not aligned
  • could be a CAM issue, a machining coordinate system error, or a CAD issue
• radius is too small, the part does not press fit well with the spikes

Improvement: We realized that the mold can be parted at the surface of the part. This means one half of the mold would be twice as deep, and the other half wouldn't need to be machined.

The week of 11/14, we changed our base design so that the part line was in a better spot, meaning less machining and a cleaner part line. We also increased the radius to increase interference with the spikes.

Base mold #2:

This part still has a slightly small radius for press fitting, so we increased the radius further to make our final part.

Base mold #3:

Due to shrinkage and improper alignment in CAD, these holes were not large enough to let the legs and nose fully come through. It was also difficult to place the legs in the correct direction using these shapes.

We adjusted the holes for the legs and nose to be larger, and to have a triangle shape better-suited to aligning the legs. Unfortunately, there was a tooling mistake on the core which required us to re-make this mold.

The facing tool had an extra piece which was not accounted for in the CAM radius of the tool. On the very last toolpath, while attempting to face around our part, this extra piece cut into our part and created undercut.

This part had a poor surface finish due to struggles with CAM geometry and making an efficient toolpath. We figured it out after this mold.

After optimizing the CAM, we made a mold with more noses and better surface finish.

We implemented a similar tree design and CAM as the nose for the legs.