I am the Cult of “Foamy”

Posted on August 8, 2012 by MattN

Hello all:

I have been a member here at the Milwaukee Makerspace for about 15 months now. One of my favorite things to do here is machine architectural reliefs from foam. I studied architectural history extensively at UWM, so I have a lot of influences to draw from.

The first piece I did was 3/8″ deep, since that’s the bit we had at MMS. I first tried a piece with all flat surfaces. It turned out very well, so I tried another piece that has slanted roof surfaces; again, success, so then I did some searching and found a 1/2″ deep milling bit. I did several pieces “on a theme”, taking the first one and making slight modifications. All of these designs are my own creations, I just daydream and think them up.

I have found that I can get 1/64″ details on these pieces. I have recently started using 1″ deep bits, and the results are fantastic! The best part is that the foam is really cheep-cheep-cheep, $25 for a big sheet at Home Depot!

My process is:

1) design in Solidworks (CAD)

2) Export to .STL file format

3) Import into Cut3D, where I generate G-Code

4) Load into Mach 3, the software that controls the CNC router.

5) Let the foam fly!

I started out on the MMS router, which uses leadscrews; my newer Zenbot machine uses belts, and is blazing fast. I can now machine 8 times faster! The largest piece shown here went from about 19 hours down to 2.5 hours.

My next challenge is to get small lines onto my pieces that will represent bricks/mortar, etc. I’ll have to generate different code for that; the milling code runs in 3d, but the “bricklines” will need to be in 2d, so I’m looking forward to that challenge. I’ll be using Vectric’s “Aspire” software for that. More to come!

-MattN

Magic Mirror Theater Prop

Posted on July 21, 2012 by BrantH

My sister is a Theater Manager at the Patel Conservatory in Tampa, FL. About two weeks ago she texted me and asked if I could make her a prop she needed for an upcoming production. “How keen would you be on making me a mirror for “Beauty and The Beast,” she said. “They want a mirror that lights up and sparkles like the one from the movie.” Even with limited experience just tinkering around, I knew I could do something fairly easily, so I agreed and got to work.

I combined two different circuits (a 555 timer to flash and a RC circuit to fade) and built a wooden frame with acrylic plates for the front and back. The wood and plastic were CNC-milled, then sanded and painted before the electronics were installed and glued into place.

The result was a fairly decent-looking, shiny, light-up hand mirror with a small thumb button on the right side that flashes 16 bright green LEDs when pressed. It all runs off a single 9-volt battery and the back can be unscrewed to replace it should it ever die.

Total build time from start to finish was probably close to 15 hours over the course of one week. The play was Thursday, July 19th and from what I’ve heard, it was a great success. I’ll add pictures from the performance if I get some.

Casting Furnace Update

Posted on June 28, 2012 by BrantH

Despite summer vacation and other obligations, work continues to progress on the Casting Furnace. In the past few weeks Bret has pinched the end of a metal brake line tube used to feed the furnace diesel fuel and installed a needle valve to better control the fuel flow rate.

Brant has been milling and machining parts for a mechanism that will both lift the lid and turn it out of the way when someone steps on a foot pedal. The next steps will be to finish the foot pedal, weld it to the rig, and secure the lid to the top of of the lifting post. Bret also plans to improve the casting tongs so they are more easy to use.

For more information, see the project wiki page: http://wiki.milwaukeemakerspace.org/projects/casting_furnace

Food Not Bombs Bronze Pendant and Final Star Trek Assembly

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Royce

Previously I had blogged about a Star Trek logo that I cast as gift for my sister-in-law. I’ll update that project later in the post, however, I held a second casting back from the blog as it was intended as a gift for my wife.

For a couple of years my wife co-ran Milwaukee’s Food Not Bombs movement. She has always had fond memories of that time and has on more than one occasion brought up their logo: a hand clutching a carrot. So, I decided to make her a pendant with a relieved carving of that logo. To begin with I pulled the jpg logo into Inkscape loaded with the Better Better DXF Output plugin. I used the Inkscape drawing primitives to trace over the major outlines of the logo and then export the tracing to DXF. Once in DXF I imported the file into CamBam where I cleaned of the drawing a little more and defined machining operations for our CNC Router to perform. I turned the outlines into a series of adjacent polygons. (e.g. a wrist polygon, a thumb polygon, etc.) I then setup pocket operations of varying depths on each polygon. Finally, I exported the file to G-Code for consumption by the Mach 3 router control program.

If you look you can kind of see the polygons even if the depth setting of each pocket is not apparent.

Above you can see the pendant in the process of being routed out and also the finished wax mold after routing. Below you can see the pendant after casting! She loved it and wears it frequently. I was a really good feeling to actually put some effort into making a gift this year. It made the act of giving the gift that much more special.

I also completed the Star Trek logo. I turned that into a broach.

Above you can see that I have mounted the Star Trek logo to a plastic backing. I’ve also cut one of Adafruit’s EL Panels way down in size and hooked it up to another one of her small inverters. The small inverter normally cannot run her panels, but after being cut down so much, it wasn’t a problem. Below you can see the two pieces put together.

And finally the finished gift!

As I said, I really enjoyed giving gifts that I made this year. I am going to try to do more of that!

Spin Casting

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Royce

So we recently got a spin caster in the space.

Jason H and I are working towards doing our first casts. To that end I’ve milled out a wax Star Trek logo that I hope to cast into a gift for my sister-in-law this holiday season. It will have an EL panel behind it and will be worn as a brouch.

First DIY CNC Club Meeting

Posted on October 23, 2011 by BrantH

Today marked the first monthly meeting of The DIY CNC Club at Milwaukee Makerspace. Ron Bean and Tom Gondek, the creators of the router, guided members and guests through the use of CamBam CAD software to generate G-code and Mach3 software to operate and control the router. The day before, Tom and Mike tested the machine’s ability to cut aluminum. On Sunday, Rich created a decorative wooden sign and Brant began making plastic shapes for a project enclosure. As Ron pointed out, in less than 24 hours we had worked in three different materials: wood, metal, and plastic.

Several items were also crossed off our wish list. Two emergency stop buttons were added to the front of the machine and wired together in series. Hitting either one stops all motion in the X, Y, and Z planes and pauses the program. We also built a relay-controlled receptacle box that when wired into the CNC computer, will be able to stop the spindle so hitting the E-stop will kill all motion in all axes and the router. For some reason the pins we’re using on the parallel port are only producing 1.6 volts instead of the 3 or 5 we expected and the relays won’t turn on. All in all, a very productive weekend.