Board longer than rack.
The goal was to make something in a larger form factor. I decided to make a stand-up for Sanvi, my two year old.
I decided to create a design with top shelf as a stovetop with four burners, and two lower shelves. Created the first drawing in inkscape.
insert first design pictur
Import from inkscape to OMax software did not work. I tried variety of ways -- dxf, ps, eps, tex (of Latex) -- that the OMax is supposed to import, but nothing worked. The best results were obtained with dxf files; however, here too, the dimensions of the different pieces got messed up, and rounded edges became straight. Apparently, this is an inkscape problem. The dxf export in the free version cannot deal with curved lines! Fix: Finally, I redrew the drawing in Omax. Omax is really easy to use, and very stable.
Tool path generation failed for the little groves for the stove top. groves for stove top picture Tool path generation failed in MasterCAM for the groves because of their very small dimension (1/4" x 1/8"). 1/16" inch tool showed a tool path in the preview, but the TAs advised against it and showed me a different fix. Fix: We turned the rectangular groves into straight lines of 1/4" (connecting the center of the shorter side of the rectangle). Then we defined the path using 1/8" flat tool, so we will get a grove of 1/4" x 1/8".
The drill bit came lose on the big CNC cutter. The cutting went fine for the most part. We had created three different .NC files, one for each type of drillbit to be used. The engraving was done with 1/2" 90 degree bit. There were two problems during cutting. Fix: First, when cutting out the pieces, 1/4" drill bit came lose and started digging into the material. I hit the emergency button, tightened the bit and restarted. Second, on one of the pieces, I forgot to put tabs, and it started to move when the tool was tracing the final part. Fortunately, the part came out fine.
Support board was longer taller than the rack. We decided to fix support boards at the bottom of each shelf to limit side-to-side movement. The lowest support board should be smaller than the rest as it will protrude further than the rack and not let it stand. I realized it after all the glueing and drilling screws. Fix: The fix was easy. Just sawed the additional board.
