Week 08

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Casting, Molding, and Horses

I started riding horses when I was able to pay for my lessons. I originally got two newspaper routes, and eventually started mucking stalls. One of the key things about grooming a horse is to ensure that their hooves are picked out. Now you might be imagining a hoof that is completely hard. That is true of their outer hoof wall. Internally things are a bit softer, to include the "frog", a triangular shaped portion on the underside of the hoof. When poked there is a little give. If a rock was to lodge itself next to that, it could cause quite a bit of pain and even lameness if not caught early enough. This is why a hoofpick is vital in every groom, pre and post ride.

On a side note (coding is not my thing) I just figured out how to do all the picture formatting! It was a victory as I have never observed my mistakes, understood on a fundamental level where I was wrong, and finally able to fix it on my own.

Hook Measurements

- I had to make a few considerations for how large I wanted each part to be.

- The hook had to be able to fit into the handle, but still be functional.

- Each measurement was made to try to prevent 90 degree angles as I was concerned with brittle fracture.

- Ideally, everything would be of the same thickness.

Hook Part

- The hook was fairly easy to make, and then to extrude.

- I even had the forethought to add anchors to the placement shaft.

FeatureXpert

- I started playing with different features of SolidWorks.

- Fillet seemed to be the right option for me. I honestly just like the look of the rounded edges.

- I went through and made sure all edges were filleted to an appropriate radius.

- Other than using consistent fillets (usually) around .01-.5 inch radii.

Circles on Circles on Circles

- I tried many different ways to put the handle together. I found four ways not to do it.

- I even had friends on the bus with me suggest different ways to do it.

Handle Complete

- Eventually I made a quarter cross cut section and did a round extrusion for 360 degrees.

- After the extrusion, I filleted inbetween the sharp angles to ensure that the handle was convenient and comfortable to hold.

Sunday Office Hours

My weekday schedule is jam-packed for the next few weeks. I have been trying to do office hours on Sunday and get as much done as possible before the hours end. My Sunday became quite the adventure when I realized that EDS was not going to be open. I perused the emails that I had recently received and made a new course of action. First, I headed to 3-412 and hunted down a chunk of wax. Then I aggressively rode my way to N51 in the pouring rain and tried to cross a cross walk at the same time as a truck. I was shocked that I didn't end up laying my bike down as I felt the back end fish tailing. I scurried into the shop and must have looked like a sad and dripping orphaned dog as I asked Zain if he would help an EECS person accomplish this week's assignment.

Starting Off Strong

- I had luckily been able to finish my drawing on the bus traveling to and from the race.

- The furthest left image is the final product that is to be created.

- The middle image is me holding my block that I commandeered from the architecture shop in building 3.

- The third image is the assembly taken apart to start the wax mold.

With a lot of help from the architecture shop, my tool paths started and finsihed!

Each new contour and path was a new opportunity to see how a tool and path shape could affect the mill.

I ended up using four different paths. I was able to use the same bit for a couple of them which allowed time to be saved. Each bit had a few different parameters that had to be selected based on material and type of bit/cut and depth of cut required.

Scalloping really helped me get a nice finish on my handle.

Step sizes are vital to getting a nice surface finish, however, the smaller the step size the longer the time. As I am always short on time, it made sense to use a larger drill to get the larger sections with larger bits and step sizes.

The program has been amazing, it has maybe too many options for me to decide what to do with all of them, but it is quite a powerful tool. If I had more time, I would have spent many more hours or even days learning how to do all of this.

The outlines for the final cut around the handle base really helped everything flow. Zain helped me add pour holes to ensure a more uniform distribution of material.

Here I am starting to move towards a full path job. More adjustments and settings were chosen by a more knowledgeable person than me.

Tool Path Review

- The first pass was a brute force removal of the material.

- Next a finer tool was used to start removing excess material.

- The purple path really started in on the filleted areas of the handle.

- The right and left side were mirrored images of one another. Here is a step showing one side completed on this step and the other just finishing.

- One final clean up pass, and it should be good to go!

Here I am zeroing the ProtoTrak.

Getting everything situated. It was important to make sure that the machine recognized the length of the bit and that I had set everything up correctly as any little thing that was off would lead to multiplied failure.

This is where everything started screaming. We adjusted all the speeds we could, but we (the shop guru and I) ended up keeping a shreiking machine rolling along.




Nothing too crazy to note here. You can see a general progression to what will end up to be a final product.

All the trimmings! No worries, I cleaned up my mess.

TIME FOR THE HOOK! Basically I went through the same process as above, but in the EECS shop.

Using the shark was a good experience as well. It wasn't as great as the ProtoTrak, but it did it's job.

Slight failure in calculating the offset. Whoopsies!

Now for the fun and messy part!