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Viewing all posts tagged "nextfab"
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New Vacuum Bed on the ShopBot!
Ever since I saw a vacuum bed in action at the ShopBot factory last year, I’ve wanted to have a vacuum system on NextFab’s ShopBot. As part of our renovations, I finally got to build one.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with vacuum systems, the biggest challenge in working with a CNC router is holding material in place. Until now, I’d been using screws, double-sided tape, tabs and clamps to hold material down while the ShopBot did the cutting.
Now, instead of these laborious methods, we can use the power of vacuum to hold down plywood and other flat materials as the ShopBot cuts them. So, how does it work?
A vacuum system has essentially three parts: A vacuum source (in our case a powerful Fein shop-vac), a plenum, and a bleeder board. The plenum is the distribution system for the vacuum, and the bleeder board is the final layer of material which covers the plenum and is in contact with the material being cut.
Here’s a picture of the ShopBot with the plenum pattern and PVC plumbing installed. The grid pattern is cut into a sheet of ultralight MDF and sealed with polyurethane. The three valves under the machine let me isolate different vacuum ‘zones’, depending on the size of the material I’m cutting.
With the bleeder board installed, the system draws vacuum right through a solid sheet of ultralight MDF. When the system is turned on, the vacuum hold is so strong that I can push against the edge of a sheet of plywood without moving it at all.
Here’s the first piece I cut to test the system- Look Ma, No Tabs! Believe me, I’m delighted at the thought of never trimming another plywood tab. I’ll be putting it through some more tests in the coming days, but for now, NextFab has a much faster and cleaner way to cut your parts on the ShopBot!
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Reopening!
Our reopening has gone extremely well. With the exception of the new laser, which has not yet arrived, just about everything has found it’s new home. The computer room is now all PC with the Macs out in the conference room. There is more space in the welding area and more around the ShopBot and table saw. It’s also more roomy in the small tools area. The Trotec Speedy 500 Laser Cutter and Engraver and the Roland MDX-540 5 axis CNC mill are now in the former Electronics Lab. The Electronics Lab is now in the room across the hallway as are the Parts Exchange bins. The 3D printers and the 3D scanner have found their new home across the hall as well. Some details are still to be worked out, but almost everything is completely functional. And, as you may already have heard, we have expanded our hours to better serve our members and customers see here in the upper left, just under our logo. If you’ve been thinking of joining NextFab, now is an even better time to do so! Check out our membership page for more information.
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Don’t forget, we now have Monday and Tuesday hours and extended weekend hours!
We’re open on Monday and Tuesday for general members from 4PM until 8PM. We have Expert Member hours on Monday from 10AM until 4PM.
We have extended our general member hours on Saturday and Sunday to from 10AM until 8PM.
You now have even more time to use our facilities.
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Would you like us to offer a Show and Tell Session?
We’ve thinking of having a Show and Tell session here at NextFab Studio on a weekly, biweekly or monthly basis.
What we have in mind is something in which members (and possibly non-members) could show off their latest projects and talk to others about them and learn about their projects as well. It would be a great time to exchange ideas and learn how others might do things in a different way.
You could help us by letting us know the any of following:
1. Is there any interest in this?
2. When and how often would you like this to occur?
3. Should be open to non-members?
4. We’d like to hear your ideas that apply to this.
Feel free to send us your thoughts at info@nextfabstudio.com. This is just in the planning stages at present and we’d like to know what you think.
Thanks!
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ShopBot Classes
I have finished both of the ShopBot classes and I have a number of ideas for which I want to use the ShopBot. The first is fairly easy. I want to make a wooden frame with engraving to hold my uncle’s World War II medals and documents so his granddaughter can display them in her home. I think this can be accomplished with ease on the ShopBot. I am not even scratching the surface of what can be done with this tool, but I do think my project will be a good starting point.
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3D Scanning
I just took the 3D Scanning class, featuring the NextEngine i2020 3D Laser Scanner. Wow. This is really cool. While it’s not as easy as it appears in the Jay Leno’s Garage video on youtube (see here), it is pretty easy and extremely cool. There is some work with the software that one must do to join scans; the technology is really invaluable for anything with complex curves such as organic items. For our class, a reproduction of a Tiger’s claw was used. You can imagine how difficult that would be to model in 3 dimensions without this tool.
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We will be at the Maker Faire NYC
We will be attending the Maker Faire in NYC on Saturday, September 17th and Sunday, September 18th, 2011. We are still working on the details and we will fill you in when we know more.
Here is a link the the event site.
Set these days aside on your calendar.
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ShopBot CNC Router Part II
Hi, I’m Mevin. I’m a high school student at George Washington High School. I’m an intern at NextFab Studio and I’ll be taking class and blogging about my experience. If you have any questions, email me at mathewmevin@gmail.comThe goals of ShopBot CNC Router Part I are to learn the basics of the software used for the ShopBot. Now in ShopBot CNC Router Part II, the goals are to get to know the ShopBot machine and tell the software to produce G-code and tell the ShopBot carve a rosette. Myself and the 2 other students waited 10 minutes for a student to show up. 10 minutes later, the student didn’t show up and instructor Lewis, tall with a curled mustache started the class.
Lewis taught us about the moving commands for the ShopBot such as command “M2”which is a G-code (computer programming language used mainly in automation) that moved the X and Y axis of the ShopBot. We were taught how to remove and change the Ball Nose Bit (The item used cut and carve the model.) We all changed the bit. First, I loosened the vacuum skirt causing it to release and go down. Then, I loosened the collet with 2 wrenches, and then removed the Ball Nose bit and replaced it with a different bit. Finally, I placed the collet back in the machine and lifted and tightened the vacuum skirt. The next step was to hold the board so it can be carved.
Lewis told us the old method of holding the cutting board in the ShopBot was by screwing the board to the ShopBot bed. This had a lot of problems, like the cutter would break from hitting the screws and it took a lot of time to screw the wood down. I asked Lewis, “how does that new vacuum method for holding the cutting board work?”. So, there’s an orange vacuum cleaner to the left and its connected with pipes to the ShopBot bed. You turn on the vacuum and it sucks through the bed. We took our board and screwed it to a larger board and we put it on the bed which sucked the board tight.
Next Lewis had each of us open the rosette file. He asked one of the students, Lee, to move to [6,6] of the x and y axis (the coordinate point where the rosette model was located). We opened the file and on the screen I watched G-code being produced and watched the Rosette amazingly being carved by the ShopBot. When the rosette was being carved, a dust collector (pretty much a giant noisy vacuum) was loud and sucked up the dust of the wood.
After the rosette was created, I got to hold it and I was amazed about how accurate the ShopBot was, because the piece was exactly like the design I saw on the computer.
The students signed off at the front desk and are now able to make a design and use the ShopBot by themselves.
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RepRap World Tour
We will be hosting Hive76’s RepRap World Tour August 26th through August 28th! You will be able to build your very own 3D Printer.
Sign up here.
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