Great to see a plan come together!

Finished Items
 

All that foam has now been cleaned up, fine tuned by hand then covered in fiberglass, Innegra cloth and epoxy resin.
I took these three boards halfway around the world with me and they performed well.
My favourite board is the 6 3 swallow tail on the left.

Here is the end result.

Attachment 13354

Future plans

I have been wanting to do a art piece of a sail fish in red oak and aluminium.
What started out as simple is now anything but.
I can't claim it is an original concept as I have admired Mark Gottschalk's work and want to see if I could design and make one myself.
Search for his name on ETSY to see his amazing creations.
Long time readers of my blog will know i have already made one smaller piece that I gave to a mate for his 50th.
It still has pride of place in his entryway.
If it ever gets finished I will post a pic up for you all !!

Regards
Ross

Ross, that is way cool stuff.

One of those designs printed on rice paper and epoxied into one of those swallow tailed boards would look pretty amazing....:-)

Finished my Sailfish Today
 

After shaping, glassing then sanding 5 boards recently it was time to do something a little more artistic.

The sailfish is approximately 1300 x 400 mm (quite a large piece)
It is made from two pieces of 18mm red oak laminated and pocketed to fit the 6 mm aluminium parts.
The aluminium was cut on the MM raw then cut and polished by hand.
The timber has been polished to a low sheen with my own special mix of carnauba and beeswax finish.

Attachment 13369

This piece just has to end up on a wall near a beach somewhere :)

Regards
Ross

Very nice Ross. Might have to steal the ideal!

Polished Aluminium VW
 

Hi Russell

Thanks for that and you are most welcome to copy.
Any thing shiny is good in my books :D.

The aluminium sheet left overs talked to me and out came my next creation - a polished alloy VW.
Details are 400 x 165 in size on 6mm plate.
Carved with a 60 degree V bit to 1mm deep.
Polished.... forever !!

Attachment 13375

While on the subject of art, it appears some of you might just have a little valuable "art" lying around that you were not aware of.. true.
Found this pic on the web.

Attachment 13376

The trick to tranforming your spoilboards into art is to cut them up into random sized vertical pieces.
Now if I can just figure out how to do that :rolleyes:
Seriously though, I do think they have managed to carry it off as the patterns that eventuate after a bit of use do have a certain interest to them.

Regards
Ross

That MDF picture looks like Alan's spoil board! :)

How come my spoil board isn't so deeply etched? Am I doing something wrong?

Ha Ha.

Maybe they have not yet learnt the well known secret of zeroing the work to the top of the spoil board.

Regards
Ross

OHHH! Zero on TOP of the spoil board. Now I see!!

Netbook Machine Controller
 

Hi All

My long suffering mini-itx machine controller gave up recently so I swapped in my DM1Z 12 inch netbook as the machine controller.

Using the netbook I still have enough ports for my USB to RS485 converter that runs the spindle, a wireless mouse and wireless game pad controller.
The step and direction commands are run over the Ethernet port to an Ethernet smoothstepper in the control box.

The netbook has built in wireless, so I still have access back to my design PC for the toolpath files.
It is a very tidy installation and as you can tell from one look at the pic - I kinda like tidy ;)

When the netbook not running my machine it is my bedroom TV so it serves a dual role earning its keep.

Attachment 13384

Regards
Ross

Where are all the wood dust???

Hidden Ken

That is ... hidden in the dust extractor and the vacuum cleaner:D

Ross

Just wanna be sure you did hide your Harry Potter Personal transporter somewhere... :D

Plywood Lantern
 

Plywood Lantern

Today I got around to cutting out a plywood lantern that I had drawn some time ago.
The joints were a little tight so my friend the hammer once again joined the assembly crew.
Besides that it went together OK.
The lantern is around 150mm square and used 6mm plywood

Attachment 13398

Other Hints

Thingiverse
Thingiverse seems to be growing all the time.
Some of the recent 3D scans here might be of interest to others.
http://www.thingiverse.com/categorie...s-and-replicas

Ikea
Looking for easy ways to make and assemble things.
Have a look at the downloadable assembly instructions for the various Ikea products.
Gives a good insight into flat packing and rapid assembly techniques.

Regards
Ross

Nice Work Ross,

Love the sailfish and the VW looks like you have well and truly captured the art of cutting ally plate now :D
All the best and thanks for sharing they look awesome!!

Cheers
Tony

More Joins
 

Experimented with a mechanical join.
It is very strong and accurate but might need re tightening after some racking forces were applied.

Attachment 13399

Regards
Ross

Very small bearing surface on the MDF for the size of the nut. Would a washer help?
Or can you get the round solid bar with taped hole through it to distribute the load more?
I assume the area where the bolt goes is not as deep as the area where the nut goes.
Cheers
David

Hi David

Some of the far better options are a "barrel nut" as you say or even just a square nut.
The bearing surface is tiny with the hex nut and in particle board doomed to long term failure.

Mostly it was just about playing with the precision available on the machine and particularly the concept of flat packing.
Several amateur joint wigglers have gone away impressed with the joint's stability but none of us tried too hard :).
I will trot on down to the bolt supplier next week and get a few M6 barrel nuts.
It easier by comparison to pocket out for the round nut and end up with a stronger joint.

Regards
Ross

Perhaps you could also saturate the area with some cyanoacrylate (superglue) to beef up the particle board in the target area.

The main thing is to drink beer with the "amateur joint wigglers" and enjoy what you do :)

Good advice David.

Tested the barrel nut fittings today and as we expected they can stand enormous force.

Attachment 13400

The barrel nut and bolt shaft are pocketed to leave a clean face on the outside of the join.

Attachment 13401

I don't have a project for these ATM but it is always good to know the Mechmate makes a such strong knock down fixture so quickly.
To simplify the joint back to basics...
A piece of 3mm x 12mm x 15mm flat steel with a tapped hole plus an M6 bolt and washer would achieve all the connection strength of the flashier commercial products.

Regards
Ross

It never came across my mind that pocketing & do away with drilling a hole for it...
Brilliant!

The only extra work I will do with this concept is to machine a groove on the drilled panel (on the left panel in the pix ) & tong fit the panels. That will ensure good square fit & should give extra literal strength/rigidity.

Draw bolt.

hi. hafele have many systems. like rafix and minifix.
http://www.hafele.com.ar/ar/external...1%20a%2014.pdf
its in spanish sorry.

That good to know as Häfele Australia Pty. Ltd. has three location in Brisbane alone. http://www.hafele.com/au/6417.asp

Regards

Skippy

Here a link for English
Catalogues and Brochures as it a https link I don't know how long it will last

skippy

Double Sided Machining
 

Thanks for the links.
A fellow who worked for a big furniture importer gave me the Häfele catalogue years ago and I was amazed at the world of special fixings.
Did not have or even know much about CNC then so a lot of it went into the "come on that's impossible" part of my brain at the time.

Double sided machining - how hard can it be :D

I was reading Alans belt reduction drive pdf where he used two sided machining for the parts.
Seemed simple enough but I was wondering how well the two sides would match up for me.
The clue is the two indexing pins that locate the job on a central axis.

Attachment 13411

Attachment 13412

Attachment 13413

Attachment 13414

Attachment 13415

Well enough it seems. This hacked together MDF laptop stand prototype proved the process admirably.
One aspect of the two sided machining is that on the underside, rebates and part way through drilled location holes for screws make aligning parts for assembly very simple and accurate.
The main platform has been pocketed and predrilled for the screw mounted cross bar.
Note the part show above is not the cross bar, it has become redundant in the design process.
The cross bar itself has the corresponding holes clearanced drilled for the screws.
It literally falls together.

The prototype still needs lots of adjustments, for example the top hinge connector is too long.
Some fits were too tight (as usual for me) and it NEEDS to be made out of timber to become a reasonable piece of furniture.

Regards
Ross

Looks cool, nicely done Ross