OOPS!

Some people seriously believe I live a charmed life where each day goes perfectly and nothing could possibly go wrong. The truth is my days are pretty much like everyone elses. In fact, I would argue that my days are filled with more things that go wrong than most others I know. Things go wrong regularly - sometimes horribly and almost always are my fault (although I don't often admit that publicly). I've learned through much experience that the best thing to do when this happens is to have a good laugh, to pick up the pieces and then learn from what didn't go right.

Last week Jeff Hartman, one of the creators of EnRoute Software, was in my studio for a few days. Jeff has many hours of experience programming routers to do amazing things. But last week he was working on something new, writing code for our relatively new four axis router. We would test out the new code by chucking up a piece of work in the giant lathe and then test running it. At the same time we were creating sample pieces for the MultiCam router manufacturer to use as a sales aid for their machines. I was video taping the test runs to show how great everything was working.

As we pushed the go button on the router this particular time, Jeff asked me if we should perhaps do a test run (in the air) to prove the file. I shook my head... what could possibly go wrong?? We were about to find out...

No real damage was done although it looks serious. With a little tweaking the file ran perfectly the second time we tested it. Life went on after a good laugh!

-dan 

Batter up!

This past week we were busy with our MultiCam. Jeff Hartman, one of the creators of EnRoute software was here in my studio. He was here to develop and test an interface to program and run the fourth axis of our router.

Up to now, to run a file I've had to manually insert some code to allow the machine to switch from going back and forth on the router bed and instead position the spindle over the lathe and then turn the piece set degrees. Jeff and his team's work in EnRoute will instead do this work automatically inside EnRoute. To run a rotary file is now a simple matter of using the MultiCam keypad to call up and position the spindle over the lathe. I then need to establish the starting X position (one end of the piece) and then hit start. It sure is a whole lot easier than before!

Jeff was working with his boy scout troop at home to turn some bats by hand. He thought it would be a cool idea to bring three bat blanks with him and turn them on the router to test the work he was doing. We had great fun making the bats and he will have a cool show and tell for his scout troop when he gets home.

The bats turned out great and were a cool way to test Jeff's ideas for the software. Thanks!

-dan

Ready to have some fun in the round.

I love big deliveries. It is almost like Christmas then a BIG truck back up the long driveway. My good neighbor Gord gets excited too for it is a chance for him to use his forklift. In this case we used both the BoCat (with the forks installed AND the forklift for those were heavy loads! The excitement today was for our order from Precision Board. There was a LOT of material - just under five and a half TONS in all. All of it was either 30 or 40 lb board which we use exclusively in our shop. I had asked for a variety of blocks to also be included - all fodder for the new four axis MultiCam. There's no way to get good unless you practice.

One of the pieces we will be building is a display piece for Coastal Enterprises. (Precision Board) It is not well known but they offer a custom gluing service. They will make up blocks of any size and shape. 

So I put in my order for a custom made block that was somewhat irregular in shape and size. It arrived today with the rest of the order, glued up perfectly. It is HEAVY and measures 20" x 20" at the base and is 6' 5" tall.

I know one thing for sure...  I will have to do a little practicing with the four axis setup before I build the file and push the GO button on this baby! 

Even so I can hardly wait!!!

-dan

New exciting territory

Today we got all the pieces of the lathe attachment and router talking to each other and the code sorted out. I had glued up some blocks of foam for testing. These blocks had a steel pipe glued in each end so I could chuck it into the lathe and be securely held in place. While there were many methods I could have elected for this made the most sense to me and will work well for any size block I choose to work on.

There are three modes the lathe attachment can work in. One is to machine flat surfaces on the blocks, then rotate a set amount of degrees and machine once more. I see lots of possibilities for this mode. Combined with the MultiCam software EnRoute can currently do this no problem. In the pictures below we are doing engrave lettering on all four sides of a block.

Then there is true lathe mode where the piece turns at a set speed and the router head moves down the block. This can be used to crete round stock, tapers or any round shape you wish much as you would do on a regular lathe.

The last lathe mode is to wrap flat lies around an axis. I created a simple (in this case) dimensional file in Enroute, did the tool pathing and sent it to the server. MultiCam translated these files to the router and wrapped it automatically. The file and tool paths I created were rough cuts, for test only. But it was pure magic as the router did something I could never do previously. My mind immediately started racing with the possibilities.

At this point (with mere minutes to spare) it was time for Shawn to head out to catch his plane home.  And after three days of helping set up the router it was time for me to get back to work. The first paying job was set up on the router and it was set in motion.  The job was more corner blocks for the Fox and Hounds Pub project. 

The machine will be kept busy for many hours doing our more conventional work as we catch up on things in the next while. As it works I'll be dreaming of some cool things to create with the new tools.

Thanks so much to MultiCam and Shawn Kirsch for making sure things were set up perfectly and running right! I've learned so much in the last days while he was here.

Now we have the technology at last. I just have to learn to use it.

-stay tuned...

-dan

Almost ready!

Today was a day for which I've been waiting for a long while. Shawn Kirsch, a tech from MultiCam came to the shop to start in on setting up our new machine. We swung the gantry into position, bolted it down and and then he leveled the machine before doing hookups and dialing in the various parts. Shawn has done this job lots of times previous and it didn't take long to do his job.

Once everything was right with the main router it was time to focus on the rotary attachment. Shawn first set it up and then dialed it in until it was perfect.

As Shawn worked he explained things in detail to me. Although I've been using a similar 3000 Series MultiCam for six years this was a wonderful opportunity to learn from one of the top technicians in the industry. Sean is a down to earth fellow, who explains it all in real english. I had asked him to explain it all to me like I was brand new to routers in the hope I would become better at operating the machine in the future. I have so much to learn, even after six years. And learn I did.

While we were at it the new router got a new computer in the office.  It will be linked with the router alone. It's sole task will be to serve the files to the router. The latest MultiCam software will be installed. A shiny new cable between the computer and router completed the package.

The machine is now set up and running. Tomorrow the actual routing adventure begins...

Stay tuned.

-dan

Christmas came early!

It was with great anticipation and delight I directed the big semi up our long driveway to where we would unload the new MultiCam. While I chased down and printed out the necessary papers to send off the old router the driver unchained and untarped the load. The machine was shrink wrapped in white plastic as I knew it would be. I quickly checked for physical damage and then signaled the unload to begin.

The rotary attachment was the first to come off the truck. It was squeezed into the router room doorway - a test for the big piece to come.

Next off was the HEAVY DUTY ROUTER. Weighing in at 4,000 plus pounds we were a bit worried the heavy rains of the last few days would give us trouble in the gravel drive. Our fears proved unfounded. The machine barely squeezed through the narrow drive up the back however, with mere inches to spare on each side. We slid one end into the doorway and then using floor jacks on one end and the forklift on the other we snaked it into the workshop. 

The new vacuum was the last piece to go in. Everything fit perfectly. The gantry still needs to be put into place and everything has to be bolted together and dialed in. Now we wait for the tech to come set it up for us.

The old machine was then loaded on the truck, chained into place and tarped securely for the drive back to Texas. I only missed it for a minute as I admired the shiny new replacement.

Now, the new adventure begins. Stay tuned...

-dan

Moving day

Moving day is always exciting. Today was just such a day.

Our new four axis MultiCam 3000 router is now in transit to our shop. It was time at last to disconnect the old machine and move it out of the way. It will be loaded on the truck as soon as we unload the new one. It is going back to MultiCam in Texas and eventually on to a new home. The old router has served me well for better than six years. With it we have created all manner of wonderful projects. It has run with virtually no problems. Our local tech center has done periodical maintenance, and tweaked the machine from time to time to keep it running smoothly. The old machine still works well and should run for someone else for many years yet.

It was with a tinge of sadness we emptied the room in readiness for the new machine.

My good neighbor Gord brought over his trusty forklift to slide the old mahine out of the router room and then bring it around to the main shop. I finish readying it for shipment there.

The new MultiCam is also a 3000 series 4' x 8' router equipped almost identically to the old one. There are two important changes. This spindle is water cooled this time so we can confidently run our long duration files without fear of overloading our air compressor. And along side the new machine will be the large fourth axis. An extended gantry allows the spindle to slide over to it.

The new machine is loaded on a flatbed truck and is somewhere between Texas and our shop as I type. Monday, or Tuesday at the latest it will be unloaded and carefully placed in it's new home. I can hardly wait! Stay tuned for progress reports...

-dan

I've seen the future!

Today I am in transit to Orlando for the Sign Magic Workshop to begin in a couple of days. I flew via Dallas and had a four hour layover there. Normally I don't care much for layovers but this one was special. MultiCam's head office and manufacturing facilities are located within a stone's throw and John Harris, kindly offered me a tour. It was too good an opportunity to pass up.

I knew the MultiCam facility was big, 100,000 square feet under one roof and another 40,000 square feet close by. That is a big space! We toured the office portion and then went through a door into the manufacturing portion. Cavernous best describes the space.

We walked up and down each long, long isle, poking in to each department. Our walk started in the massive, bulk steel department, through cutting, welding, finishing, painting, electrical, assembly and packing. It was truly impressive seeing machines in all stages of completion. Everything, every machine was oversize - make that huge. The CNC's were of every size shape and configuration. Along the sides of the large space were (relatively) smaller areas lines with racks of pieces, ready for when they were needed. Everything was in it's place, neat and organized. 

As we came to the end of our tour we came to a machine that was nearing it's final stages of assembly. I knew immediately whose machine this was for it was the only one like it I saw on the tour. This machine had my name on it. It was a 3000 series router, with a raised and extended gantry. The fourth axis bed was to the left side, pieces of the workings ready to be bolted together. The electronics were largely in place. It reminded me of the first time I saw one a MultiCam at a trade show six years ago.  I sat in front of the machine and watched it work but was really not seeing what it was doing. Instead I imagined what I might be able to make it do. Today, as I stood in front of the dream machine, I again had visions of it working in my shop. Higher gantry clearance and a fourth axis will give me unimagined capabilities. 

It is going to be fun! A large order of Precision BOard is also on the way, including some large blocks glued up especially for the fourth axis. The folks at EnRoute are working on ways we will employ this new technology. And as I start back from this trip in fourteen days the new MultiCam will also be in transit as well. The future is closer than ever!

-dan

Coming up for air

Six years ago when I was first looking at CNC routers and considering just what to purchase I quickly found the choices overwhelming and confusing to say the least. It quickly became apparent that a MultiCam was at the top of the pile in terms of quality. As I talked to many people I learned what all the terms meant...  gantry, linear rails, planetary gears, spindle, servo, stepper and a hundred other terms, - all confusing at first... but now at last familiar. My local dealer helped me through the process, as eager as me to select the right machine for my needs and budget. Looking back, we made the right choices.

Now as we look forward to a new four axis machine it is equipped very much the same way as the old one. But there is one thing we chose to do differently, primarily because of the type of routing we do in our shop. While most routers are used as very fancy jigsaws, in our shop we use ours primarily for creating textures. This means the router runs continuously for long periods of time and not for short spurts as most machines would be used. 

We found that while adequate for most applications our compressor was woefully inadequate for our way of doing things. My big five horsepower upright compressor burned out in a hurry. It was time for something more powerful. Further complicating things was a single phase power source - no options there. This meant we were limited to about seven and a half horsepower. A screw compressor with a built in air dryer was the perfect solution. And it worked well. But after two years things began to go awry. Then it quit altogether. I called in the experts. As it was explained to me the compressor quickly gets up to maximum pressure and keeps up to the copious air supply needed to both cool the spindle and provide high air pressure needed for tool changes. Then it shuts down, waiting for the air to draw down. On demand it fires up again and so it cycles.

But the way this particular compressor works the high pressure air bleeds off slowly in the compression chamber, so the motor can start up without load. The trouble is the cycle completes before the air is totally bled off meaning the compressor starts under load. After countless cycles it burned our the brushes and windings. Thankfully the compressor company covered the damage under warrantee. Lucky me. But a permanent solution was needed.

The solution was an easy one, recommended by my dealer. The spindle on the new machine would be water cooled. This meant far less demand on our air supply. Research showed we could retrofit a water cooler on our old machine, not necessary for the short time we will continue to own the old router.

Even after almost six years of owning a CNC router I continue to learn lots of new things every day, both in the files I create and in the operation of the machine. It is exciting and challenging to say the least. I have no doubt this will continue for as long as I live.

-dan

Building files for four axis routing

Like the files we currently build in EnRoute for our three axis MultiCam, I am discovering there are no end to solutions of how it will be done for the four axis router when we get it next month. The folks at EnRoute are working on the software to do the task. I've seen it done but have yet to try the software for myself. Many of the four axis tasks will build on the capabilities of the current software. In many instances the files can be build as they are now and then the reliefs simply wrapped to form the fourth axis files. A thorough understanding of the current software will give us a leg up on what is to follow.

In the last days I have been searching the net to find out just what folks are doing and how they are doing it. What I have found out is many are using '3D clipart' and simply modifying the files to route in the round. It's not that much different than what is happening in the 3 axis world of routing. But I want to do a whole lot more than that. I want to build anything I can dream up. Even with the very limited things I have thought and dreamed up so far I believe I will be able to use EnRoute to achieve it. And since I managed to do many things that many told me would be difficult or impossible to do on a three axis machine - imagine what will be possible with the four axis being built now.

Last night as I sipped on a Coke and did some sketching It occurred to me how difficult something like a Coke bottle would be with a three axis router. Difficult but not impossible. But with a four axis setup it suddenly became relatively easy. As usual it is as simple as visualizing the various bits and how to eventually combine them for the finished result. Let me take you through the process...

It only took a few seconds to locate a picture of the Coke bottle I wanted. It was the old style with embossed lettering. I did a vector trace in a few seconds more. The Coca Cola logo was also traced and made into a vector in seconds. EnRoute is very good at that task.

Sweep to rails is a task I am only moderately familiar with. I quickly learned that the rails need to be vertical - unless it was some other operator malfunction I was performing. Once I had the rails turned the right way it worked the first time. It looked like a flattened Coke bottle already. This was merged with a zero height relief.

Now it was time to add the flutes. I lined the Coke bottle picture up with the relief and drew two appropriately sized shapes...

These were then duplicated across the bottle.  I counted the number of flutes on a real bottle and then sized and spaced then accordingly. I then modified my relief to form very subtle flutes across the bottle.

The lettering was next. Unfortunately I neglected to grab a screen capture of the vectors. I squished them together to deform them horizontally. The thing to remember is that as we wrap around the center axis the thicker part of the bottle will stretch out the surface (by virtue of its distance from the center axis), bringing the lettering back to it's proper shape.

The bottle cap was next. O created a zero height relief and then modified it with the oval shapes. I made then 1" tall and domed steeply. The parts off of the zero height relief were cut off sharply of course.

I checked the side view and saw they needed tapering at the top. 

I chose to modify them with a fade bitmap It worked out to be 0.6" that worked to blend them into the top of the bottle cap.

The next shot shows how the blend bitmap affected the ridges of the bottle cap. 

I then resized and positioned the file before merging it with the original relief. Except for wrapping it around the center axis the file was complete.

Since I do not yet have the software for that function we will have to wait to see how I did in creating the file... but I am confident that it will work as planned.  Stay tuned for the final result.

-dan

Looking ahead...

With the new four axis MultiCam now only about four weeks away I am working on the designs for a few pieces which will help us learn and explore the capabilities of the new CNC machine. One of the pieces is a new display for Precision Board (Coastal Enterprises). When I visited them a few weeks ago I was struck by just how green their operation and products are. I want to create a showpiece for them that demonstrated this message. The piece will also feature LED illumination from Heico Lighting.  The LED's will be tucked under the ribbon, top and bottom to give it a green glow. 

The six foot tall piece will be carved from a single, massive block of 30 lb Precision Board. But rather than waste all the material that would normally be turned to dust, the folks at Coastal Enterprises will glue up a custom made block of the correct dimensions. It is a service they provide. This will be chucked up into the new four axis MultiCam and whittled to the final shape.

The folks at EnRoute are busy making sure I have the software capabilities I need and we will undoubtably create and solve some problems along the way. It is going to be exciting!

Stay tuned...

-dan