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Lincoln Park High School
Brownsville, Texas
ShopBot helps propel students to success
at Texas SkillsUSA District 13 competition
By Brett Dickinson, Tech Ed
Instructor, Lincoln Park High School
Building trades from Lincoln Park school scored big at district
thanks to their favorite tool, ShopBot. The Community Service
received a state qualifying second-place silver medal. The
project featured how CNC technology can be used to benefit
others. Students designed and built three sets of therapeutic
furniture for a clinic that serves children with special needs.
Parent and clinic staff said that this furniture was superior to
any they could obtain commercially.
Their Chapter Display, SkillsUSA
Champions at Work, Leadership in Transition won first place
and featured a design that not only was cut on a ShopBot but
featured both ShopBot machines and projects. The project showed,
in both photos and PowerPoint, the transition that is occurring
from handheld to CNC routing . As you can see, the display is
cut in the shape of a router.
In addition, two projects that were
designed with PartWorks and cut on a ShopBot won first-place
blue ribbons and will advance to state. These projects had some
unique features made possible through the use of CNC technology.
Most of parts for the poker table - including the drawers, table
supports and legs - were cut with the ShopBot.
The poker card and chip designs were done by the student.
For more information on SkillsUSA,
please visit www.SkillsUSA.org
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Tom & Deborah Twark, Elk Creek Woodworking
Forest, VA
ShopBotters put their machine to work
restoring hurricane-damaged church
Elk Creek Woodworking’s husband-and-wife
team of Tom and Deborah Twark purchased their ShopBot in 2006.
Although they had been running a successful woodworking business
together for more than 15 years, neither had much computer
experience, and they had never operated a CNC machine before.
Deborah admits she endured a pretty severe learning curve in the
beginning, but with the help of ShopBot’s technical support
team, she took on the task of learning the machine and the
software. Deborah now does all the programming on Elk Creek’s
ShopBot as they use it to create intricate, one-of-a-kind
products as well as large quantities of duplicate parts.
During the past several months, the Twarks have undertaken two
major church projects. The first was a rebuild of a Texas church
that was almost completely destroyed by Hurricane Ike. They
provided a new pulpit and communion table, flower stands and
brochure tables. The second project was a stained-glass window
framing job in Virginia. The three-week project required
approximately 1,000 board/feet of poplar and 15 sheets of Trupan
MDF. 99 separate toolpaths were required to cut all parts for
the project.
www.elkcreekwoodworking.com
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Purdue University announces 2009 Guitar Workshop
dates.
Purdue University will hold its
third-annual Guitar Workshop from July 6-10, 2009. The workshop
offers beginners to experts a chance to learn luthier skills from the
pros. During this week-long class, participants will make their
own solid-body electric guitars and learn both the practical and
technical aspects of guitar making. Attendees will get a complete kit
of materials, including a guitar body and neck with the rough shape
pre-cut on a ShopBot. Participants will then be able to tailor the
final shape of the body and neck, as well as add other custom touches.
Building sessions will be interspersed with talks on subjects such as
guitar design and musical acoustics. Experts from Purdue, Taylor
Guitars, and Fender Guitars will share their knowledge and assist in the
building process.
Register early as space for this
week-long workshop will fill up FAST!
[Purdue University Guitar Workshop]
Toby Ban works on his guitar at last
year's Guitar Workshop
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Glen
Kadelbach, GR Kreations
Hutchinson, MN
ShopBot & Vectric help Glen
Kadelbach save the U.S. space program
Well, not exactly,
but they sure helped him make a really cool sign for NASA.
01/08/09
Veteran ShopBotter Glen Kadelbach, President
of
G.R. Kreations, Inc.
(parent company of
Innovative Foam), received his copy of
Vectric’s Aspire on November 1st. On November 7th, the U.S.
Department of Defense called Glen and told him they needed a
sign for the
Stennis Space Center - NASA’s rocket propulsion testing
grounds - in southern Mississippi. The only catch? They needed
it in 10 days.
[Side note from ShopBot: Glen, do you
regularly receive phone calls from NASA?]
Glen had already been studying the Aspire
videos and was certain he could complete the project. So, armed
with a government-provided jpeg, he began to draw the DOD
emblem.
Glen cut the Eagle and olive branches on his
PRSalpha, and the rest of the sign was made on his hotwire
machine. Constructed from blue expanded styrofoam, the 16-color
sign was painted with latex. It
is made of 74 individual
pieces, is 36 inches across,
weighs four pounds and took
five days to complete.
This project is a great example of the
ShopBot’s ease of use, Aspire’s extremely short learning curve,
and most importantly, Glen’s creativity, talent and attention to
detail. Fore more examples of Glen’s work, check out his
website,
innovativefoam.com.
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ShopBotter Scott Smith of Avella, PA
knows his way around a set. Whether it’s a theater stage, a government
conference or a major motion picture, Scott knows how to use his ShopBot
and his imagination to bring dramatic scenery to life. Scott has
created sets for movies and theatrical productions, and in July he
fabricated the conference stage for the
National Governors Association Centennial Meeting
in Philadelphia. The project required 200 sheets of OSB and MDF and
needed to be finished in four days. A job of that magnitude with such a
short deadline would intimidate even the most capable ShopBotter, but
Scott rolled up his sleeves, fired up his ShopBot and completed the task
with time to spare. But this January, Scott’s work comes to life for an
even more frightening project when his ShopBot-built sets are featured
on the big screen in the Lionsgate motion picture My
Bloody Valentine 3D.
Opening January 16 and featuring some of today’s hottest young
stars, “My Bloody Valentine 3D” follows Tom (Jensen Ackles) as
he returns to his hometown on the 10th anniversary of the
Valentine's night massacre that claimed the lives of 22 people.
For the horror flick, Scott used his ShopBot to fabricate signs,
facades and routed letters for motels, hospitals and tunnel and
mine entrances. In addition to “My Bloody Valentine,” Scott has
created sets and props for the movie
“Graduation” and theatrical sets for the
Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, the
Pittsburgh Public Theater and the
Pittsburgh Opera. Scott and his wife Jamie have been
ShopBotters since 2005. They may be reached at
scott_jamie_smith@yahoo.com
Set of Pittsburgh Public
Theater’s “Comedy of Errors” and the National Governors Association
Centennial Meeting |
My Bloody Valentine 3D opens Jan 16
Two of Scott Smith’s
ShopBot-cut signs for the set of “My Bloody Valentine 3D”
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And Now, from the Same Designers as the MoMA House,
ShopBot-Cut Backyard Sheds/Workshops/Playhouses/Greenhouses!
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Larry and students discuss design with
others watching |
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MIT architects Larry Sass, Dennis Michaud, and Dan
Smithwick, along with
Bill Young and Robert Bridges who provided inspiration and ShopBot CNC
cutting, have collaborated on a new building. Using
techniques similar to those developed for the innovative
"New Orleans" House
on display this summer and fall at New York's Museum
of Modern Art (MoMA), they've created a versatile
concept for digital fabrication of backyard sheds built
entirely with interlocking plywood parts and assembled
without nails or screws using only a mallet. Variations
allow for tool sheds, workshops, playhouses, poolhouses,
and greenhouses. The building goes together very easily
because the parts fit and lock together much like puzzle
parts (see Ted's
column).
This one will be assembled at the
ShopBot Jamboree
and Maker Faire Events in Austin, Texas (October
16th - 19th). Bill and Robert cut most of the parts on
Bill's ShopBots in Virginia so the assembly, with a little help
from the gang of ShopBotters on hand, should go quickly.
If you can make it, you'll see up close this concept for
digital fabrication, which puts the intelligence into
each part rather than the assembly process in order to
produce structures that can be created and built on-site
using local materials and eager assemblers. |
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Popping out and assembling steps |
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State Representative visits CTE class
On October 20, Texas
state representative Eddie Lucio III visited Brett
Dickinson's Career & Technical Education (CTE) class at
Lincoln Park
High School in Brownsville, Texas. Rep. Lucio
introduced
HB 2383 to the Texas state legislature last
session. The bill was passed and now provides a subsidy
for CTE students who take and pass trade or occupational
certification or licensure exams. |
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Aluminum sign using 153,650 holes creates interesting
effects...
Sergio González
Monterrey, Mexico
AB
Communicación Visual
Sergio sent us a
report of a very interesting large sign that his company
(AB
Communicación Visual) in
Monterrey, Mexico recently completed for a restaurant:
"We are a sign company from Mexico.
We have had a PRT 48 since 2004. Designing and making
signs has became much easier with the ShopBot.
Recently, we were hired for a very
challenging sign/decoration job for a Chinese food
restaurant called Barrio Chino. It was basically
a drill job, with a total of 10,975 holes in aluminum
panels, each one measuring 90.5" x 79" (cut down into 4
modules to fit our 48" x 48" PRT).
There were a total of 14 panels
(that means 153,650 holes that needed to be drilled in
aluminum!), so you have an idea of the amount of work in
our hands.
Thankfully, we were backed up by
superb technology and had it done in no time."
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TechShop [Open-Access Workshop] is setting up shop in Durham,
ShopBot's
hometown...
[link to the story ... ]
[link to
TechShop website ... ]
First TechShop in Menlo Park, CA; TechShops coming to Durham,
NC and 5 other cities
"Workshop resources made available to
everyone" is the idea of TechShops. Anyone can make all sorts of things using TechShop tools, machines, and
equipment, and draw on TechShop instructors and experts for help
with their projects. Every TechShop will have a ShopBot (for
those who don't have a tool in their own shop) and help and
training will be available. |
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Responding to the call from
Extreme Makeover!
In the spring of 2006, I checked the
voicemail of my cell phone and found a message from Ty Pennington from
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. “Hi Paul. This is Ty Pennington and I
was wondering if you would ....” They had a pair of interior doors to
his “SECRET PROJECT” which needed to be carved. Ty called because I have
a PRT Alpha ShopBot. Ty also owns a ShopBot and it is run by his long
time friend, Rob Williams in Atlanta. Rob did the door design but if he
cut the doors, they would have to be shipped from Atlanta to New York on
a very short schedule. Further, my PRT Alpha should be capable of
cutting the pattern somewhat faster than Ty’s PRT. I agreed to make the
doors from Rob’s cut file.
On a Friday, I drove to
the Arena house in Somers, NY to pick up the doors. This was the same
day the old house was being destroyed. When the doors arrived, Big D
(the lead carpenter for the show) discovered that the doors which were
delivered were not solid wood; instead, they were solid core. (They were
veneer clad core and we didn’t know what the core was). Since this was
Ty’s secret project, Big D had asked Ty to come over and discuss the
problem. Ty is a highly accomplished carpenter in his own right and we
discussed several options but the best option was for the show’s people
to find solid wood doors and get them to me. If we used the doors that
were delivered, the current design would completely remove the veneer
and expose the unknown core material. I left the Arena house with the
solid core doors just in case the design producers could not get solid
wood doors in time.
Saturday, I received an email from the lead
artist, Nancy Hadley, asking about a sample that I had left with the
design producers on Friday. She asked if it would be possible to design
and cut large appliqués from a picture she had attached. Since I was
waiting for the solid doors, I agreed to make the appliqués. This was my
first project with V-Carve
Pro/PartWorks.
The design producers soon discovered that
businesses which would have solid wood doors were not open on weekends.
Through multiple phone calls and emails with the producers, I could
sense a growing panic and Sunday morning I started to redesign the
pattern to keep almost all of the veneer on the solid core doors and
still maintain the same overall look. This was my second project with
V-Carve Pro/PartWorks. As I was designing, my bot was cutting the first set of Nancy’s
appliqués. The effort had turned into a prime candidate for a disaster
-- A new machine, new software, a novice operator (me!) and a three day
deadline. Anything and everything could go wrong. There was no backup
for anything.
By Monday morning it was apparent that we would
not have solid wood doors. We would have to use my design for the solid
core doors and hope the core was not scrap wood (which would show
through in a few areas of the pattern). Each door would take more than 3
hours to cut. The pattern would show the slightest error; I had never
made a multi hour cut; and we were completely out of alternatives and
time.
Both doors were finished by early Monday
afternoon. The core of the door turned out to be a single piece of
particle board … we were lucky. The second set of Nancy’s appliqués were
done before midnight.
I delivered the doors Tuesday about noon. At
this time the exterior of the new house was completely done! When Big D
stained the doors, the particle board core of the door sucked up much
more of the stain than the veneer did. It made the doors look like they
were stained with two different but coordinated stains and they looked
great! Nancy used the appliqués on the backs of the doors and the walls
in the Nursery (Ty’s “SECRET PROJECT”). Big D was happy, Nancy was happy, the producers
were happy, Ty was happy, and I ... I was just incredibly relieved. The
pressure was off, and my first major ShopBot project was a success.
I keep in touch with Nancy, Big D and Ty. By
March of 2007 I had worked on my eighth Extreme Makeover house including
two houses in one week. I have been asked why I volunteer so much time
and effort. When I was small, we were very poor and many people helped
us. I am simply paying it back.
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John Ervin, Colby College Department of Theater
& Dance
Waterville, ME
How
to: cut a student in half
www.Colby.edu
John Ervin,
Technical
Director of Theater & Dance at Colby College, faced a
challenge: How to cut a student in half. He needed to do it as
part of a magic scene for a production of Andreyev's play "The
One That Gets Slapped." Well... he did it! John based his "dismiddlement"
device on Horace Goldin's 1923 patent for a magic device that
slices a body in half -- or so it appears. A simple looking box
from the outside, it is highly complex on the inside. The device
required 7 sheets of plywood, lots of precision cut parts, and
careful craftsmanship to hide the magician's secrets. John
generated Part Files from the original, un-dimensioned, patent
drawings and solved a number of technical problems, including
making sure that the young lady to be sliced in half could
breathe inside the hidden compartment.
[Read John's full story]
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Rob Bell,
Zomadic
San Francisco, CA
The
Zomicile Project
www.zomadic.com
The Zomicile is a modular prefab building
system which uses our Rigid Panel System© to balance and
distribute the compressive and tensile forces of the structure
using a unique slotted panel and gusset design.
Zomadic, LLC is a design and fabrication
company based out of San Francisco, California. We
specialize in helping designers, builders and makers of all
sorts realize their ideas using digital technology. We
also have skill and passion for all things polyhedral, geodesic
and synergetic. The Zomicile is the fruition of an
ongoing research and development project to design an
inexpensive, easy-to-manufacture, easy-to-construct, redeployable polyhedral shelter.
What is a Zome?
The word Zome is a combination of the words
"zonohedron" and "dome." In certain aspects, a Zome is
similar to a geodesic dome. The difference is that the
structure of a Zome is based on a class of polyhedron known as
zonohedra. Whereas a dome will tend to resemble a sphere,
a Zome will tend to resemble a jewel.
So what's it for?
Geodesic domes are the manifestation of a
theoretical ideal of maximum strength with minimum materials.
However, when it comes to the day-to-day usage as an inhabitable
structure, the geodesic dome can be awkward and problematic.
The highly tensegral nature of the surface makes domes difficult
to seal from the elements. Undesired acoustics are
reported. A lack of vertical walls makes interior design
difficult. Numerous and varying compound angles in the
facets make additions and redesigns very challenging.
Consequently, despite their inherent symmetry and beauty,
geodesic domes are a constraining design and not a liberating
design.
Zomes address most, if not all, of these
issues and they are arguable more beautiful that geodesic domes.
Once a few basic rules are understood, the simplicity and
sublime nature of Zome geometry becomes apparent. So
what's it for? From hand-held model to club house, tool
shed, hunting camp, home or spaceship, it's up to you.
It looks cool, but what makes it special?
The Rigid Panel Tension System©
allows the structure to be easily assembled and disassembled.
It also enables a Zomicile to be redesigned and upgraded using
the same panels. This saves materials and money.
Start small and grow big. And using our system, Zomes can
also be connected and mated with each other in an astounding
variety of ways.
So why hasn't this been done before?
Readily available, low-cost software
technology has reached the point as to solve the design aspects
of the Zome and dome design. Digital manufacturing such as
CNC technology has reached a price/performance point in which
the common craftsperson may realize the advantages of robotic
manufacturing with regard to accuracy, repeatability and
"produceability" of otherwise difficult to manufacture parts.
Is it for sale?
Basic Zome SketchUp models are available for
free download through the Google 3D warehouse. Go to
www.sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse and search for the
collection "Zomicile."
Plans and kits are available for sale
through www.zomadic.com.
From Rob Bell, Zomadic, LLC.
www.zomadic.com
[Note from ShopBot: Rob's Zomicile was
awarded an Editor's Choice award at Make magazine's Maker
Faire, October 20-21 in Austin, Texas.]
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Robert Ball, Habitat for Bats
McDonough, GA
Going
batty over ShopBot
www.HabitatForBats.org
If someone had told me a couple of years ago
I would be building bat houses I’d have thought they were a
little odd… if they’d told me I’d need a ShopBot CNC to do the
job I’d have never believed them. But, here I am, making bat
houses among other things on my own ShopBot PRTAlpha96. I spent
about a week getting up to speed and cutting various small
projects. Then I created our bat house project file and ran an
entire month’s production in two days! Before we were struggling
to make 30 commercial bat houses, now we have time to do even
more including a new bat house DIY kit that we used in a
workshop for 18 elementary students.
Habitat for Bats is a family business. We manufacture for
www.batcon.org
and must meet their stringent requirements. One of the most
tedious parts of the job is cutting literally miles of 1/32”
deep roosting grooves every ½” on every surface inside the bat
houses. Each 4 chamber bat house has almost 500 feet of roosting
grooves in them. With my custom made router carriage it took
about 20 minutes per house just to cut the roosting grooves, not
to mention time to cut out and drill holes. The ShopBot can now
make all the panel cuts, drill holes and cut the grooves for
four bat houses in about an hour. The best part was… I was
assembling my other bat houses while the Bot was cutting grooves
instead of pulling a router back and forth. I decided that this
thing might prove useful. You also might say I have a groovy
job!
The ShopBot has opened up a whole new range of possibilities.
Not only do we produce better and more decorative bat houses but
now we are creating a full range of bat products. We’ve added
V-Carving to some of our houses and varied the roosting groove
design. We now have bat cut outs for the fronts of the houses,
small bat magnets, signs that say Do Not Disturb the Bats and we
even created a Bat House Address Marker. With the extra shop
time we’ve started accepting a few custom jobs again and started
creating non-bat related products.
I never expected to enjoy the ShopBot so much, I should have
gotten one years ago. The shop will be reorganized soon and the
ShopBot will become more central. Here I am with a pile of
Botted stuff. My Wife, Son and Daughter (aged 8 1/2) have all
used Part Wizard and the ShopBot to cut various projects you
see. from
Robert
Ball, www.HabitatForBats.org
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Off-road ShopBotting
7/14/07
Pascal
"Paco" Riendeau from Québec Canada, a ShopBot forum
favorite, was contacted for help by a
Mini-Baja team that needed molds made for body parts for
their vehicle after their sponsor dropped out at the last
minute.
Paco and the team decided
that the best way to make the parts would be to slice the
computer model and mill the individual slices out of 5 sheets
of 1" MDF. Paco used
MOI for slicing the models and
Vectric's Cut3D for creating the toolpath.
With Paco's help the team
placed 13th out of 75 contestants ! You can find out more about
this project (and much, much more if you explore around) in
Paco's Blog.
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Click on image for larger view.
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7/14/07
Carl Scheffler, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge in the UK, has been working
with the new PRSstandard at the
FabLab in Tromsø, Norway. One of his first projects was this
two-sided weave
pattern. Carl describes the process as...
"To make the weave, I designed a
mathematical formula that would generate the pattern and then
implemented it in Python to generate .sbp code for loading into
the ShopBot software. The Python script is parameterized so that
I can specify the width, length and thickness of the weave
"ribbon", the width and length of the weave itself, and the
diameter and profile (ball or flat) of the end mill bit. The
script then generates the toolpath needed to cut out the shape
and saves it as a .sbp file."
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Click on image
for larger view.
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Making skulls on the ShopBot Indexer
3/7/07
From Guy Mathews of
New Wave
Woodworking - "Thought you would like to see one of the
projects we made using your 4th axis setup that we purchased.
The skull is life size. Approximately 6 inches in diameter and 9
inches tall with the base. Made from two pieces of maple glue-up,
I started with 1/2 inch ball mill and progressed down to 1/8
inch. My next step is to put a containment field around the
teeth area and go back in with a 1/16 ball mill for detail.
Total cut time was about 3.5 hours with the 1/8 inch taking the
longest. 15% step-over really gave me a nice finished product
from the machine. Buffer wheel took care of most all tool marks.
Skull was rendered in Rhino and Clay Tools and G-code was
generated using CAM software." |
CHETUMAL,
QUINTANA ROO, MEXICO
CENTRO DE IMPRESION,
DISEÑO Y CONSTRUCCION.
Saludos
les envio fotografias desde Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico, de las
muestras de los trabajos que hemos venido realizando, actualmente
tenemos un shopbot prtalpha96, SOFTWARE BOBCAD-CAM, Aca te envio algunas
de las fotografias de los trabajos que hemos realizado, estan realizados
en Autocad 2005, Part Wizard, BobCAD-CAM, si requieres de alguna otra
informacion, la idea es ver si pudieramos aparecer en el spotlight!!!,
de la pagina de ustedes, de antemano muchisimas gracias.
ARQ. JOSE FERNANDO TORRES LLANES
Ken Reimers, Surf CNC
Gold Coast Australia
"Hi there fellow ShopBotters, I have been building surfboards over 25
years, shaping them all different ways with a variety of tools and jigs
until I stumbled onto a site that featured the Shopbot. I was not only
interested in the fact that I could increase production but also stoked
about the ability to log and reproduce favorite surfboards. Since
receiving my Shopbot and grasping its learning curve, the refinement and
accuracy of my product has given me a new understanding of how important
CNC is to progression.
I have two machines, a 48 and a 96 PRTalphas. The 96 is set up for
surfboards, the boards are held down by adjustable pneumatic cups on
lengths of precision extruded aluminum. I designed and made the holding
system so I was very pleased when it did the job perfectly. One length
of ally is for holding the blank while it cuts the bottom, the board is
then turned over and placed onto the other length of ally. The alignment
is critical and must match the previously cut bottom otherwise all the
time spent on designing is wasted. The ShopBots consistent accuracy has
out done any of the other more expensive computer shaping machines that
I have personally shaped from.
The 48 is for different projects, from artworks to building my kitchen,
this is the fun side of ShopBotting. I am hoping that one day I will be
able to design, make and sell other products outside of the surfboard
industry and have the best of both worlds.
My wife and I built the machine room, it is made from Hebal (aerated
concrete) wall panels and Ibeams with Hebal floor panels on the roof. I
created a special shoe to take the foam dust as it cuts and the ducting
takes it up through the roof and back down to the dust extractor. The
room is easy to clean and with the hebal it is also quiet. My office and
control room is right there behind the balcony glass and gives a clear
view and easy access to both machines. This is my dream setup and I
would like to thank Shopbot for helping make it become reality.
Regards to all ShopBotters"
www.ansleydesignfab.com
Hickory, NC
"The
first discreet project I undertook after getting our ShopBot up and
cutting was to fulfill a prototype order for curved modesty panels at
the behest of a national office furniture manufacturer here in North
Carolina. It wonderfully demonstrated the paradigm shift afforded by the
vertical integration of design, engineering, programming, and making.
I’d worked out in my mind how I wanted to build the bending jig but had
not drawn anything other than the radius adjusted for springback (a
characteristic of all laminated parts.) I was up early on the morning in
question and after a cup of coffee I fired up the computer, launched
TurboCAD and set about working through the particulars. In an hour or so
I’d worked through the construction, modeled the assembled jig in 3D,
exploded and nested the parts into two 4x8 sheets and exported the two
sheets as dxf files. After a second cup of coffee I lit up the parts
programming software and worked through the various tool paths required
to cut the parts. I pulled two sheets of ½” LitePly from the stack and
within another hour and a half I had the parts cut, trimmed and the job
knocked together. The accompanying pictures show the sequence which got
the jig designed, engineered, programmed, cut and assembled with time to
spare before lunch. The last two pictures are of the parts being
laminated via vacuum bag (production bag will have reusable gaskets) and
the finished parts ready for delivery.
I spent no time drafting, or producing drawings from
which to work (parts knocked together only one way) or laying out or
making cut lists - really quite amazing. "
Read more.
Jan Bouterse, Hardwood
Designs
Durham, NC
“The lobby (in the Ruth and Herman Albert Eye
Research Institute at Duke University) is stone and it sounded very
hollow,” said Jan. The sound was also a problem in the conference room
during meetings and teleconferencing. The solution devised by the
architects was to cover the ceilings with close to 200 MDF panels filled
with 30.000 slots to absorb the sound. In Jan’s words, “it seemed like
millions of slots.” To add to the challenge, the specialized panels had
to meet the aesthetic requirements of a world-class piece of
architecture." ...
“We
used the ShopBot PRTalpha to rout out the slots. Then we put a sound
killing material on the back,” said Jan. The design allows sound to
enter the panels through the slots in the MDF and the specialized
material deadens the noise. “Basically 75 percent of the noise is
eliminated which worked really well in the meeting room and the lobby.”
It was the massive number of slots that made the
PRTalpha such an important element to the project. Each 2’x6’ panel had
to be perfectly fit with numerous 4” slots spaced exactly 1 ¼” apart.
The design was further complicated by the labyrinth of sprinkler holes,
light holes and other interruptions that are typically seen in the
ceilings of public buildings and had to be included.
“The advantage we had with the ShopBot is that it is
easy to program. We needed to stop those slots short of the sprinklers,
lights, etc.,” Jan said, adding that he used ShopBot Part Wizard for all
his design work on the project.
With the help of Carve3D, ITC Millwork recreates a French mantle carving
12/06/06
Jeff Arwine of
ITC Millwork, LLC sent in
this picture of a beautiful carving that they are working on
that was modeled from a stone mantle carving from France. Jeff
carefully measured the original carving and created CAD
drawings, then passed them on to James Booth of
Carve3D to
have the 3d file and toolpath created. Jeff says the file took 3 hours to cut on their Unistrut PR tool that they've just upgraded with a 4g Control
Box. |
J.D.
Iles, Lincoln Sign Company
Lincoln, NH
ShopBotter/Signmaker writes ShopBot column, sign blog
9/27/06
JD Iles of
Lincoln
Sign Company in Lincoln, NH writes the sign column "Lincoln
Logs" here on the ShopBot website. He also writes a popular
blog about his sign business that this week was featured in
the online edition of USA Today. The article JD's blog
and noted: "The blog lets customers see how signs are made.
Plus, co-owner Iles says writing about his shop caused him to
think more about bolstering customer service. He writes all
entries and takes all the photos, spending an average of 30
minutes a day on it." |
|
,
Plyline UK
