W3 - Computer-Controlled Milling

Assignments:

• Make Something Big

ShopBot

This week's assigment was to use the ShopBot to create something big. As I am still settleing into my new home, I decided to make a wine stand. I designed the stand on Fusion 360 using parametric design and many splines. I tried experimenting with functions and forms that I don't tend to use as much when designing components for my projects.

My parameters didn't flow as expected this week. The main parameter that I was worried about was the thickness of the board. I was expecting to design everything and change it when I went to the shop. When I arrived and changed the dimension, my design failed. I found out that this was due to the fact that I cut out many constraints from my design when deleting lines to make my drawing solid. I know that next time I use parameters I should be carefu about not deleting drawing constraints. When the sketch is not well contrained and you change paramters, many lines loose continuity and the sketch fall apart. To fix this, I restablished my parameters and redrew the joints over the extrusion that I had made previously.

I used a 1/4 inch downcut bit to mill out my design. I cut with a cutDepth of .26 inches in order to finish my design with two cuts. I inserted small tabs on all lines for my design. The tabs allowed the machine to cut properly and they were small enough to be removed with ease after the cut. My cut was set at 10,000 rpm. After characterizing the machine, I realized that the tolerance that I was thinking of giving to the design was too large. I made it smaller but I still din't get the optimal fit.

As mentioned, the tolerance that I gave my design was a bit too large so pieces did not hold up with the strength that I was expecting them to have. In order to solve this I used a little sand paper to tighten the joints. The quality of the material that I used (OSB) was not optimal so I used sand paper to fix all edged so that they would be smooth and look better.

After, some minor adjustemnets at the machine shop, I was able to take my stand back home, and install it there. It ended up fitting very well with my furnitura and was able to hold 8 bottles without falling apart. Here is the final result! Salud!