Another Nautilus Art Door With Iris

I got to searching and found another door with similar aesthetic over on Makezine:

Brass Iris Porthole and Locking Mechanism…

These doors are made by Chris Schaie who sells the mechanisms.… Read the rest

Nautilus Art Car Irising Door

I have a soft spot for machine projects that involve art, if you hand’t noticed. Check out this amazing Irising door for the Nautilus art car:

The Nautilus Aperture Door from Almost Scientific on Vimeo.… Read the rest

G-Wizard Editor Version 0.410 Uploaded: Now With Custom Canned Cycles

There’s a new version of our G-Wizard Editor and CNC Simulator uploaded today. If you’re a registered user, the install page is here. If not, click that first link and register. It’s free since we’re still in Beta test and you’ll find a lot of great features there.

This is our first release to require Flash Player 11, the latest release. While we’re not yet taking much advantage of FP 11′s performance enhancements (native access to your graphics card), we want to start requiring it to get everyone on the same page.

In terms of features, there are a couple of them in this latest release. First, we’ve got all the extended Work Offsets going. This means the appropriate System Variables are saved, and you can access, for example 300 offsets on the Fanuc, or 256 on Mach3.

The second new feature is Custom Cycles. These basically let you create a library of g-code snippets that are easy to paste into your program by hitting the “Custom” button on the Toolbar. When you do that, you get the following popup:

Insert or Define Custom Cycles…

The Cycles are selected via the box on the left.… Read the rest

Magnetic Sheet Metal Bending Brakes

It’s really handy to be able to do some simple sheet metal work around the shop to make brackets, covers, and similar sorts of things. I have wanted to build a finger brake for quite a while, perhaps something like this one:

A “finger” or box and pan brake…

Plans for it are available from the Village Press book, “Metalworking, Book Two, The Best of Projects in Metal.” 

I’ve also considered making a press brake attachment for my 45 ton hydraulic press. They’re easier to make than the finger brake and can be set up to take commercial press brake tooling which is pretty common on eBay. Lots of folks have built these attachments in varying degrees of sophistication:

I have a page where I collected a bunch of these press brake attachments for ideas. There are even moments of total self-delusion where I think about building (or buying used) a full on press brake and then converting it to CNC. It certainly has been done before, and in spectacular style such as this CNCZone thread by Bigtoy302, but that’s probably a long ways beyond my time availability to tackle something like that.… Read the rest

Climb vs Conventional Milling Chapter in the Feeds and Speeds Cookbook

Many machinists exclusively use one strategy–they always climb mill (CNC’ers) or the always conventional mill (Manual machinists). Putting aside the important issue of backlash (Climb milling is dangerous on machines with a lot of backlash), there are some real strategic considerations in choosing a milling strategy. You won’t always want to use just one. Most of the time, Climb Milling produces the best surface finish. But sometimes, Conventional Milling beats it. Check out our new chapter to learn more about it.… Read the rest

Check Out Our New Twist Drill Chapter in the Feeds and Speeds Cookbook

The lowly twist drill is one of the most commonly used tools in the machinist’s arsenal. By all accounts, it also has some of the highest material removal rates of any of the tooling available. As such, it’s worth getting to know them a little better.

Twist Drills

Check out our new Twist Drill chapter in the Feeds and Speeds Cookbook.… Read the rest

A Shopmade CNC Z-Axis Indicator

I was surfing the web the other day, looking for something new to fixate on when I suddenly decided to go visit one of my old haunts: Home Model Engine Machinist. This is a great little board that is focused on building model engines. There are wonderful examples of craftsmanship at all levels to drool over, and while the site is mostly inhabited by manual machinists, there’s a growing amount of CNC information there too. Probably the best thing about the site is it values good comraderie and won’t tolerate the trolls that inhabit and get too much air time at a lot of other sites. These are all folks you’d love to go have a beer with and talk to about the art of machining. If you’ve never visited HMEM, and you have any desire at all to talk to a good audience about machining model engines, by all means check it out.

I happened to spot one thread in particular that had some great pictures of a really nice shopmade Z-axis indicator, so I wanted to pass some photos along here as a great example of what you can find without too much effort if you’ll take the time to go explore HMEM.… Read the rest

Taming an Unruly Spindle Power Curve With G-Wizard

Imagine you’ve just purchased a new Haas TM-1 mill. You’ve been madly CAD/CAMing away on a new design, and you’re eager to see it turned into shiny machined bits of metal. The TM-1′s 8.5 HP spindle should make short work of that aluminum. You pull out your G-Wizard Calculator to set up the feeds and speeds. You want to do some roughing, so you pop in a 3/4″ carbide “corn cob” rougher, and set GW up for a 1/2″ depth of cut and a 1/2″ width of cut.

G-Wizard suggests 5194 rpm and 101 IPM for this job. You look over at the HP indicator, and see you’ll be drawing down 5.3 HP for this job–well within the 8.5 HP spindle’s limits. Dang, you almost feel sorry for the hapless chuck of 6061 you’ve tee’d up in your Kurt vise. This is gonna go like a hot knife through butter.

You close the door on the machine after a quick visual check, tag the green Start button, and settle in to watch that bad boy go to work. Seems like the cutter is barely into the cut when the spindle stops dead in the cut and you’re scrambling for the E-Stop.… Read the rest