CNC TIME LETS GOOOOOO
First time doin it very exciting and this may be the first Ben Light assignment that I accomplished what I went in to do with only one trip into the shop. There were FAILURES and MISTAKES but I wasn’t downtrodden to the point of leaving the floor. A win.
I. WE BEGIN
As is tradition, I gather my materials, make my measurements and commence being beaten bloody by some new bullshit* software.
* it’s nice just AAAAAAAA at first
All was going about right. Had my fun little design, simple, but I do like it, worth the time. The afterclass homework gang was piecing things together, helping eachother out. Honestly would not be able to do this without the multiple heads, genuinely. I’d leave lol.
Things started to feel wrong when I was selecting paths for my design and there were many many segments to choose. I recall Ben just clicking once on his design segments and the whole thing was selected. I figured oh well this is fine. Until, that is, my design looked like this when I rendered the animation. Far too many segments, big green squares, what is going on?
Troubleshooting revealed that drawing this on iPad illustrator and converting that SVG into a DXF via a random shady website may not yield the most stable or quality files. But after some fiddlin, it seemed as though things were alright and ready to go? So I figured I’ll set up my CNC.
II. SET UP FOR CUTTING! Part One.
Here you’ll see me getting the feel for the control module, drilling some pilot holes then adhering the wood to the spoilboard (shitboard). You can see where I zero’d my Z axis left a bit of an imprint in the plywood. Kinda difficult to NAIL that gentle little kiss of the bit to the material.
All set???
NOPE
Okay now what’s this??? My Illustrator file on my iPad said this was a 4” piece. I actually even upsized it on purpose just to make sure it would fit the bit to about 6”. What gives “X off limit” shut the HELL UP no it is not!!!
Spoiler alert, yes it was. Another fun thing about those conversion sites is I guess they don’t care what size your SVG was supposed to be and my scale was WAAAY OFF.
So I fixed it. And look how much better that looks?
Yeah don’t worry I’m sure.
III. ACTUAL CUTTY TIME
All that BALDERDASH out of the way, we’re ready to roll :)
I loooove vaccuuming, very satisfying way to pass this time. And look how powerful it is, sucked my design right up at the end. That pop at the end is pretty scary too. It *was* emphasized in class to use the assistance jig there but I feel it could be stressed in just a couple more words the importance of that near the end of the cut. <3
IV. Finishing! Bc why not, laithe is right there.
