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| Little boxes all wrapped up in ticky tacky ! |
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| awemawson:
I needed a small box (6"x3"x2") to cover up the back of some control buttons that was adding to the Traub lathe. I bent one up out of 1.6 mm zintec steel but I wasn't at all happy with it as I couldn't get the bends sharp enough |
| awemawson:
OK it would be behind a panel so couldn't be seen - but I'd know it wasn't right! I've previously run an angle grinder with a 1 mm disk along a line to bend tight bends, but this was a bit too small for that approach so I thought that I'd update the idea with CNC. I drew up the box profile and bend lines in FeatureCAM, stuck the target sheet down onto a backing board with double sided tape and unleashed the Beaver Partsmaster on it. Profile was done with a 6 mm end mill, and the grooves for bending with a 6 mm ball ended mill. As the box mounts on the rear of the control panel by screws in two tabs, these tabs needed to be bent in the opposite direction to the rest of the bends involving reversing the sheet part way through machining. I used the holes in the tabs as locators for pins (well actually 5 mm drills!) to get the sheet back in place. |
| awemawson:
So all that sounded REALLY EASY ! Well in essence it was, but a lot went wrong along the way. Initially I used a piece of MDF as a backing board, and stuck the sheet down with double sided tape. As the MDF would swell with coolant I had to run dry. The sheet got warm, the tape let go and the emergency stop button got pressed :bugeye: I tried again with much smaller increments of cut, but again off she came. This time it wasn't a heat effect, but I had cleaned the backing board with spirit to get the old tape residue off, and although I'd dried it well with an airline there was enough held there to soften the glue and release the part. That was yesterday. In the middle of last night I had a brainwave. Use a bit of melamine covered mdf. The spirit won't soak in. So this morning I sliced a bit off the plinth of our kitchen units I found some left over plinth board from our kitchen build, and started again. All went swimmingly until I decided to use compressed air to clear chips and keep things cool. As I wafted the air nozzle around it lifted a thin transparent protective cover sheet at the edge that obviously is intended to be peeled off after installation. So my double sided tape is just gripping onto this thin sheet :bang: In practice it held, I got through the first side, and in fact the peel off sheet made clean up easier for sticking it down in reverse :ddb: :ddb: In all a very useful exercise as I've learnt a few things and ended up with a satisfactory box |
| Chuck in E. TN:
Nice work! Chuck |
| dsquire:
--- Quote from: awemawson on October 11, 2013, 07:38:08 AM ---So all that sounded REALLY EASY ! . snip . Well in essence it was, but a lot went wrong along the way. Initially I used a piece of MDF as a backing In all a very useful exercise as I've learnt a few things and ended up with a satisfactory box --- End quote --- Andrew Another case of the journey being as enjoyable/rewarding as the destination. Nice work. :D :D Cheers :beer: |
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