Addicted to CNC!

[Aerosim Solutions]

Hi all, I just can't leave this machine alone...this is my first attempt at creating proper backlight panels! Having great fun, these machines are a great investment for any builder and not that hard to get your head around.



Cheers Gwyn

[jackpilot]

Suddenly, everything seems possible hey?
.. those are the best toys a grown-up kid can get.
We have the right Hobby!!
Have fun!

[Boeing Skunk Works]

Wow, great work Gwyn. Can't tell them apart.

Mine is so old they were still using decals!

[XOrionFE]

Your engraving looks perfect Gwyn.   Did you end up doing those in small blocks of letters (multiple toolpaths).   Looks like all of your letters came out perfect (similiar depths).     This is challenging because of variations in surface height of plastics but yours look great!  What type of bit did you use?   

Scott

[phil744]

not that hard to get your head around.

Yeah okay 

Tell you somthing i am impressed by how sharp the engraved font it, looking at this and the Flap gauge Wendy made i would swear it was laser etched, just out of curiosity how long did that panel take you to just engrave Gwyn?

[when acting as a wave]

Wow. Yes, that's indeed some very nice engraving.
It can be difficult to find fonts that work this nicely sometimes. Excellent work!

Dean.

[Aerosim Solutions]

Hi guys and cheers for the comments, first of all a few tips I learned from a 'pro'!

Mount a small piece of MDF on to the table and mill it flat using a wide endmill, this ensures a dead flat surface to mount the workpiece on. I used a 25 degree, 0.5mm tip 1/8th engraving bit for this panel and engraved to a depth of 0.2mm, it only needs to remove the paint really, I could have gone shallower! I did use seperate toolpath files for each line of text, this takes a lot longer but it ensures the letters all stay in line. Machine some lines across the MDF in the X and Y axis, these act as guidelines for mounting the panel to assure it is square to the toolpath. I use double sided sticky tape to stick the panel down as there is no real load on the workpiece when just engraving and it hangs on well. I don't know what font Boeing use but I just used 'Tahoma', it looks ok I reckon. All the engraving took about 75 minutes, it was slow but there was no hurry! I understand why these things are expensive now.
Love your new machine Phil, I looked it up on the net and it's awesome! Ok, I have CNC envy!!!

I put the Matrox Parhelia triplehead video card from my old sim PC into the CNC PC just for fun! My machine is solid billet aluminium and weighs 50kg, it cost a small fortune to ship from the other side of the country!



Cheap engraving bits available here - http://www.virtual-village.com.au/cnc-bits



Gwyn

[geneb]

Ahh, another VCarve Pro user I see!

g.

[Aerosim Solutions]

Absolutely Gene, it's worth every cent!!!

Gwyn

[Aerosim Solutions]

My friend Denham, who is the director of exhibits at www.scitech.org.au has just solved an issue with my CNC and I have just completed two complete sets of B737 MIP sub panels. I had to fit a new PCI parallel port card and my machine stopped losing steps, I messed up the engraving on a few panels due to the fault but thankfully it is working great again.


Cheers Gwyn

[XOrionFE]

They looks fantastic Gwyn!

I have to make my lowers yet myself then decide if I want to tackle the overhead.....

Which drawings are you using right now? 

Regards,
Scott

[Aerosim Solutions]

They looks fantastic Gwyn!

I have to make my lowers yet myself then decide if I want to tackle the overhead.....

Which drawings are you using right now? 

Regards,
Scott

Hi Scott,

I take screenshots of the panels straight from the Boeing operations manual and save them as bitmaps. I use photoshop 6 to resize the bitmaps to true scale then import them into VCarvepro. When they are displayed in VCarve, I draw over the top of the bitmaps to create the toolpaths for Mach3. I find it quite an enjoyable process and I do a lot of them on my laptop whilst the CNC is cutting stuff or engraving. When I'm certain all my VCarve files are correct and in some sort of order, I'll post them on the site.

Gwyn...

[Aerosim Solutions]

More stuff from the Aerosim workshop...




Ok, that last line is not strictly Boeing!!!
Gwyn

[XOrionFE]

great ideas Gwyn and thank you.

I have been using the autocad drawings posted here and rescaled them and they seem to work good buy yours are probably as exact as they can be considering how you are doing them.    I have been meaning to check out VCarve and will have to take a look again.   

Regards,
Scott

[Aerosim Solutions]

great ideas Gwyn and thank you.

I have been using the autocad drawings posted here and rescaled them and they seem to work good buy yours are probably as exact as they can be considering how you are doing them.    I have been meaning to check out VCarve and will have to take a look again.   

Regards,
Scott

Hi Scott, yeah VCarve is great, it is much easier to set up designs than in CAD, much quicker. It generates the GCode and gives you a 3D animation of all the toolpaths. You can see if you have got it right before you turn the machinery on. It cost me AUD$625.00 but I reckon it is worth it... www.vectric.com Check out the demo videos!

Gwyn

[scorpioflyer]

Hi guys and cheers for the comments, first of all a few tips I learned from a 'pro'!

Mount a small piece of MDF on to the table and mill it flat using a wide endmill, this ensures a dead flat surface to mount the workpiece on. I used a 25 degree, 0.5mm tip 1/8th engraving bit for this panel and engraved to a depth of 0.2mm, it only needs to remove the paint really, I could have gone shallower! I did use seperate toolpath files for each line of text, this takes a lot longer but it ensures the letters all stay in line. Machine some lines across the MDF in the X and Y axis, these act as guidelines for mounting the panel to assure it is square to the toolpath. I use double sided sticky tape to stick the panel down as there is no real load on the workpiece when just engraving and it hangs on well. I don't know what font Boeing use but I just used 'Tahoma', it looks ok I reckon. All the engraving took about 75 minutes, it was slow but there was no hurry! I understand why these things are expensive now.
Love your new machine Phil, I looked it up on the net and it's awesome! Ok, I have CNC envy!!!








Gwyn

Gwyn

I have been following your work for quite sometime, so I won't repeat here the same opinion that I share with all the members that have complemented you on your fantastic skills.
For the Boeing fonts I saved this link, and perhaps you can have a look at it.

Cheers
Antonio

http://home.hccnet.nl/jwopdenakker/building%20tip.html