Reminisce for a moment

Tonight I reunited with a Solidworks drawing I created all the way back in the spring semester of my freshman year at Texas A&M. It is a supreme plesure to see this drawing considering the multiple hard drive crashes I've had over the years. In August of 2004 I had a this part quoted for 1 unit to be made of aluminum (desktop size), and the cost was somewhere near $800. I have always dreamed of having this piece made, and the dream may soon be coming true...

Can anybody name the vehicle this design came from???

UPDATE: I kept digging and found the original files including this Photoworks rendering!

CNC mill coming in for landing!

It has been a great weekend! Weeeeeee

This 33 year old Bridgeport BOSS 5 CNC milling machine just found a new home after sitting idly for 10 years in Buda, TX. It is in excellent condition, but it's not currently 1978 so excellent is not going to "cut it" if you get my drift. Approximately 400ish pounds of perfectly good electronics (including a hole punch type tape  reader) will be removed and replaced with modern motor controllers and a desktop PC that's lying around somewhere. Existing pneumatic controls for both motor/spindle brake and power actuated variable speed spindle (belt type CVT) will be commanded by a new PC Breakout and board (BOB) on top of the existing relays. Possibly/definitely expecting to see a servo driven lathe chuck/rotary table combo which makes the 4th axis, and opening vast opportunity in machining capability. This is a fun challenge because the chuck rotation must range from 1 RPM to 2000ish RPM while retaining .001" rotational accuracy on the face of a 6" diameter part. The high RPM allows for lathe style cutting operations. I'm hoping the following sentence combined with the auto spindle brake will allow strong lathe cutting.  A custom PID controller must be set up using an angular "encoder" attached to the spindle shaft. This will finely control the position of the spindle and allow the cutting tool to stop on a dime, and then reverse with sufficient angular accuracy in order to tap holes automatically. Yeah that's going to be fun :-/

MEOW

First production run

I actually made 5 of these in one run, but two of them were just not as pretty... This is a test of a design, they will be 8" larger on the next run. 

This project was delivered today. Customer is very pleased!!!

Bridgeport, CT

is where this machine was made. Now it sits in our shop! I have been instructed NOT to convert this into a CNC machine. :-(

Double Feature Thursday

Today saw the finish of two projects. Firstly, the two part intake plenum mold was completed with just under 2 hours of machine time for each half. Second today was the completion of a very custom engraving for Greenwood Milling, 1hr 45 minutes machine time.

Intake plenum, half done

Mold will be used to make a carbon fiber intake plenum.

        

Fazio Floors, LLC

The customer is VERY happy with their new indoor sign.