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Attachment 389498Dont get to do odd stuff all that often. One of our good designers moving to a new office wanted a little door sign. Have to excuse my dirty desk.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FiS...ew?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FvF...ew?usp=sharing
are the standoffs just glued to the unsupported sections? clear rod or aluminum tube?
The standoffs themselves are through bolted, they are typical stainless steel sign standoffs (the four larger posts in the corners). The small pins supporting the floating sections of the font are counter bored 0.0400" into the backing plate and also into the floaters, and then bonded into the counter bores.Quote:
Originally Posted by Adam Herman
Darn...that's really nice! Beautiful work, Mark!
Thanks Jim. Like I say, an odd one lol. Good customers get special treatment hah.
I wouldn't call it "odd"...I think it very creative and likely reflects the design-focused mentality of your customer. It says something about them besides just their name.
I like it !
Thanks Rodger. Not something typical hence the odd thing. It was a fun one.
Weve been running a good bit of thick aluminum lately (1/2"). This all has me thinking of building a bit of a tub for the CNC. These jobs make a big mess.
Great sign, and a good one to keep in mind for the future.
I added a skirt on two sides of my machine to help solve the cleanup problem. Aluminum and plastic are horrible. Plastic always seems to have a way of finding a path into the rack on my machine. I picked that idea up from the steel guys.
Thanks Brad. Your one of my benchmarks for precision lol. Floating those danglers in the font without tabs works on a small sign. Not so sure as they get bigger. This thing looks amazing in person. Photos are the devil of precision.
Great Sign Mark!!!!! you have any pictures of the thick 1/2" aluminum you cut I am looking at getting into cutting some for vacuum fixture boards for repetitious work and was wondering how the process went. Any lessons learned ?
Thanks Adam, no photos on the 1/2" stuff. I am horrible about taking photos of work as a rule. Im getting scolded about that regularly now with the social media. The only lesson is that on a flat machine its an utter mess. And I mean a mess. Unlike wood, the chips dont sweep or vac up whatsoever and the worst part about it is that coolant and flying screaming hot chips soaked in coolant really dont play well in a wood shop (your finish rep will read you the riot act when they walk in an see it). Im building a clip together dam to contain the mess somewhat but Im still working on some better solutions though not going to invest much time until it becomes a regular process. The mess is enough that if it were something that became regular a small CNC mill would be a better option simply for chip containment alone.
I dont baby my equipment at all but I do tend to treat that spindle a little bit like a Faberge egg so the Aluminum rattles my cage a bit. The only advice I can give is that my best results (with anything really not just the Aluminum) are when I crowd the hell out of the machine. Its scary to push the feeds way up, and Ive never broken a bit though everyone says thats the benchmark for being a few clicks too fast. I just calculate the feeds and speeds and I run my feeds at the top end or just a touch faster and all is good. Its pretty amazing how fast you can go but again, did I mention the mess lol. Chips will fly 8-10' off the machine which leads me to believe coolant is flying that far too. So dont have any raw wood nearby and be prepared to include a full surgical cleaning of your area into the job when your done. That goofy little sign I posted was sending chips that were perhaps 1/8" square or larger flying all over. If you were near by they WILL burn you. I have a mister and have thought about cutting dry with just air and running the DC but Im guessing the chips are hot enough to melt the bristles on the shoe, or weld themselves to the inside of my flex hose, and I run a fiber drum so... that never happened.
If I were going to be making vacuum fixtures I would never use Aluminum. Id be making them like Jim did out of corian or solid surface. If the fixtrues could be small enough you can likely get all the material from top shops as drops for cheap or free. Even if you were making large fixtures you'd probably be in for the same money as Aluminum in pre-cut sizes and shipping. Just my 0.02. We make most of our fixtures out of scrap 1 1/8" MDF and dont even use vac. We just machine really tight pockets an incorporate a little cam or wedge in the event a blank is a touch small. But it of course depends on your work. If you have to do full edge profile that wont work.
When building that sign above I said never ever again. But having run them a bit its not to bad. Dealing with the floaters in the font is the PITA part.