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Pics of work projects

macgyver

Stainless
Joined
Aug 2, 2012
Location
Pittsburg, KS
I was going though some files and saw these again, figured I would post a few up here and do a little show and tell.

This first one is a short run I did for a customer, I machined all the wood and aluminum, he did the concrete work. There were a couple Walnut tops and a Maple top.
The tops started out as a big thick blank and it was a flip operation. I did the bottoms first and then flipped them onto an mating vac fixture to do the top. THe aluminum connecting hardware was machined on the router as well. He did all the design and I just machined it. THe legs on the maple bench are cast, I did not do them.











 
This next project is a very good friends parents' bar. They wanted to finish the basement with a bar and it snowballed into more than any of us planned. The wood is all mahoghany with sapele. THe wood bar rail is 13ft long and one piece. I machined it on a Komo just like I have now with a 5x8 ft table. I made a table extension to hold up the end hanging off and had top and bottom programs for both ends. It was an all day affair machining it. Part of it we only had the one shot as we didn't have any more material. It is app 6 inches wide on the profile. THe ends are wrapped around the counter top, again all one piece.

The veneer is crotch mahog with sapele inlays. The center is a celtic cross and the two beside it are a celtic knot. The inlays were cut on the router, we laid up the sapele on a pc of 1/4" mdf and cut it out, the pocket on the panels was cut first and then the inlay itself was cut to match. It took awhile to do it as well as I cut a few practice pcs and got eh cutter comp exactly where I wanted it so there were not any gaps and it wasn't too tight etc. I spent a whole day on 3 inlays, but I wanted them to be absolutely perfect. Then the curved panels on the end. I don't have any pics with it finished with the curved panels, they were the last thing we did and I haven't made it back up to get pics. The curved panels were laid up in a vac bag on a fixture that we used to hold it to cut it on the router as well. The panels are 1.125 thick and are a rim panel style. Thankfully I called it quits on doing inlays on them, too much work. THe pic of the corner of the curved panel is as it came off the router, I cut the perimeter, cut the angle/taper of the flat and also cut the ogee as well. It was located off the center of the crotch pattern. In these pics it is still attached to the fixture.

THe dropped ceiling is simple veneered full panels held up with Z clips. The crown is 12" tall and the center is veneered sapele that is on a curve top to bottom with it thicker in the middle, then a 4" mahog bullnose top and bottom.

We did this project while we were in school and it was my first higher end project like this, still proud of it and I learned a ton.

I need to go get pics of it finished, I forget I don't have any.

























 
Very nice.
Can you provide some details on how you did the staining/finish on the project in post #2?

I have a Sapele project in the works just now and I am looking for a direction for finishing the piece.

Thanks
 
I don't remember that well. If I recall it was a water base stain, he called it NGR all the time. I know we got it from an ML Campbell dealer. We sprayed it on and I am not sure if we wiped it or not. It has been a long time. Then I think it was just post cat laquer for a finish coat. If you want more I can call the guy, I am certain he will remember.
 
This one was heavy. They started out as 2) 3.5" thick 4x8 sheet of BB ply. The customer glued up two blanks for me and he gave me the drawing, they are a one off wine rack. The hole in the face are at an angle. I used the 5 axis to do the holes, made it so the hardest part of it was getting them up on the table. This kind of stuff is what makes me miss the 5. I'll get one of my own someday. The trail 70 is mine, I rode it to work that day.













 
These are some misc parts I do, one is a switch plate out of 1/8" abs. I nest them on a smallish blank, leave a few tabs between them so I can cut them without a dedicated fixture and them they just break apart when done. The other is a thermoformed cap I do, I form them and then trim them out on the vac fixture I made, the forming fixture is the one on a pedestal and is made of Ren board. The trimming fixt is just mdf that I laminated the sides.









 
This one was the hardest thing I had done up to then, and maybe even now. It is a bench that a student from K State brought me the design and wanted me to help him make it. It is mdf that he fiberglassed over and put an automotive finish on. It ended up at the 2010 IWF show and won best of show. THe hardest part of it was taking his 3d model and breaking it up so that I could machine the parts. It ended up I did each end split in half vertically, then a top and bottom of both the seat and back, the ends were a nightmare because of the way they transition into the seat and back. I had to do alot of creative undercutting with the 5 axis and some long tools. I worked on it for 4 very long days. I am glad I was able to do the machining, but I never want to see another. I gave him a nice smooth surface, but he still spent months finishing it to get it smooth enough for gloss finish. It is app 6ft long to give an idea of scale.

The first is the rendering he gave me, then a screen shot of one of the 3d models of an end pc, then the bench in primer and lastly in it's final paint.

















 
Jason-

That all looks like fabulous and fascinating work!

The customer glued up two blanks for me and he gave me the drawing...

When you get a drawing for something like that, is it in autocad or similar? Or do you really get a line drawing on paper, and then scan and digitize it somehow?

I really like all the benches. & the mixed media.
The last one I don't get a sense from your description that cnc is any faster than just hacking it out by conventional methods, by the time the first coat of primer is applied, though? But some description of how you get from a model (or drawing?) to the full size would be welcome.

Thanks for posting, and don't hesitate to keep doing so. It's great and interesting work.
I wish more people would put up their projects.

smt
 
Glad you guys like the pics.

Stephen, as for drawings, I get anything from a solid 3d model via email to a part handed to me to replicate. I have had people give me the napkin drawing or a picture of something. Sometimes the hardest ones are the repair/wear parts that they give me to make new ones and I have to figure out what "new" was. This is typically when I go onsite and measure the machinery to make sure I know what they need, whether they do or not.

Most of my drawings come as a digital file though if they can provide one, it usually makes the process faster if they can draw it to begin with. I have had a few times where their drawing was so crappy that I had to redo it from scratch. I used Autocad for so long and now I use Draftsight 2d, it is just like autocad and is free. I will then rework the drawing for my use in house as I know how I want it and I put in location info and draw fixtures or whatever I need to get it done. Then I would go to the cam and put toolpath on it and make the g code to make the router run.

Which are you talking about, the orange bench? I think that a big part of his vision was to say that he had it cut on a router, high tech and all that, the other thing is that I am not sure that making it anywhere symmetrical would have happened otherwise. The nice thing about the router is that I can do mirrored parts easy and they actually match. This was also a big learning opportunity for me. Even now, I think it would be faster for me to do it on the router. And the sweetest part about the cnc is that I can load another and hit the go button and then I have multiples in a very short time. This bench was probably never thought of as a production piece so that wouldn't have weighed in on the decision much.

The first set of benches were set up for a production run, although small, I still took the time to make dedicated fixtures that I wouldn't have for one part.

I'll dig up some more pics.

I'd like to see others' work as well.
 
This set of pics are from various work I got from a local pattern shop before he got his router and even after when he was booked up.

I do not know what the mold or pattern is that has the blue tape on it, some weird part that he made a fiberglass master of. He does a ton of fiberglass tooling for production fiberglass shops. Anyway the large curved one was a section of a fan shroud. This was the little one, he made one on his larger machine that was twice this size.
Typical method for these was to cut a 6" section of glued up Trupan and then superglue the next layer on and cut it until we got the the top and finished. It allows for much faster programming and run time doing it all 3 axis. There are many times that the final touches needed to be done with 4 or 5 though.

The last ones are of a prototype of a blow molded part for a local co that makes play ground equip. They wanted a fullsize actual sample part that they could run through testing of pinch points and such before the gave the go ahead for the blow mold. The ships wheel is now in production and I see them all over. It is a push pull swing for a kid. They were both flip operations, pretty straight forward nothing fancy. That's my boy in the last pic, best dog ever.



















 
I got to get a brand new Haas metal lathe all filthy with wood dust - HA.

Had my least favorite customer ever ask if I could turn these 2 newel post caps, had to be cnc, couldn't do it by hand blah blah blah. He was and is an arrogant jerk. Anyway the only reason I took the job was to get on the lathe down the hall. It was pretty neat, if I had the money I would get one. It is like watching a player piano run, in auto mode the handles turn by themselves and crank etc, you have to swap tools though at a too change. Hit the manual button and you got a very nice manual machine with built in DRO.
Anyway, you can see the one didn't make it past QC (me), it had a nipple on it that wasn't planned, that's why I had them give me extra blanks.

I used a pc of knife stock and made a form tool to put the two 1/4" ribs in them. It worked great.











 
Here is one job from the local millwork shop, he had to have these plinth blocks made to match an existing historical structure. They gave us an original and then we had to make a bunch of new ones of the rosettes and plinth blocks. The angle cuts were done with a custom ground router V bit so that we could run it in one pass per center line. The rosettes were brought to us already ran through the molder in 8ft long pcs with the profiles on top and bottom, I just put the angle cuts in them and cut to length. The plinth blocks were similar except the little transition from angle cuts to flat face was done with a few passes with a ball mill and then cut to length.

Both are app 10" tall and doug fir I think.





 
My standing army, ready to do my bidding.

Had a consultant that did financial training stuff and had this idea to use these little guys to be his 'acumen'. Anyway, cut them out of 3/4 mdf cherry veneer I had in the rack and then had them laser engraved with his logo. Hard part with these little parts is holding them, you can't hold it, you can't cut it. THey are only 3" tall, I tabbed them and then flush trimmed them on a table router. Ended up doing a few hundred over time. They were fun to make and leave places to see who found them.





 
I think I talked about this one before in a cnc discussion. This one is an entertainment cab that a good friend that wanted me to match a china hutch he already had with a curved top and a crown profile we weren't able to find easily. I took measurements off the crown and drew it up with the curved crown as one piece. The cab is just a top section with 2 towers but it is 9 ft wide total so it was easier to assemble onsite. I wanted to make the top section a permanent assembly with it screwing into the towers, never have to mess with the crown etc. I wanted to make the front piece of crown one pc so I didn't have to fit the miters where the radius comes to meet the straight. Made it very simple to process and it turned out nicely, even for red oak.

There are ply ribs that are arched as well and then faced with red oak arched backers front and back that have a 1/4 x 1/4 dado cut in them to accept the veneered ply arched ceiling/top. Then the crown was put on over the red oak backer pcs. It is a small profile, only 3" tall. I used a 3/4 ball to cut the large radius on the profile, a straight flat bottom cutter to cut in the 90 deg corner features and the perimeter and a 3/8" rad roundover with the bearing removed to do the bottom roundover part. I also cut the ends to length so when I mitered them I just had to cut the end off flush, no extra measuring. I then mounted it to the backer and frame then did the final fit with the side returns. Got to use my big disc sander to fine tune the joint, I love that sander.

Back to the discussion I mentioned, most guys here would have ground a knife or combination of knives/tools and ran it on a shaper etc and not see a reason to cnc the crown. I was able to use tools in the changer already and once drawn I had it programmed and the machine and part set up it under an hour then run time was only 15 min with a part that was ready for 220 grit. It is a pretty viable solution to a molding of only a few feet.

This one is recent, don't have any pics of it with finish or installed completely yet.













 
This was a personal project I did with a good friend when we were in school. Started out to build just a couple then thought it would be cool to try and sell a bunch. Ended up making 15 of them. One is/was in the office of the then VP of HD in Milwaukee. We were also accepted to IWF design show with it in the RTA category. It is designed to fit in a box knocked down and the side panels etc can be swapped out if a person wanted to. Frame is mdf with black laquer, body work is maple, handle bars are steel tube that I welded up. Rocking base is hickory. We got the 15 new homes and that is as far as it went.















I see I have gained weight since then ....
 
McGyver do you know what software was used to design the MDF and fiberglass bench? I'm a Solidworks user but have recently got Geomagic Freeform for some biomedical work. Freeform is more of a (super awesome and powerful) clay modelling tool but either would work here. I would guess it was done in Rhino actually as the Rhino is common and not expensive. Now you have all the NC files you should do it out of styrofoam and wrap it in carbon fiber. Because that would be awesome. Anyway these are great projects and it looks like you're one of those not very common machine people who can readily work with artists. Bravo.
 
Trboatworks, I talked to the guy about the finish. It was Hesse brand who is now Diamond Vogel. The store we got it from is in KC area and they still carry it and you could call them to get specs and details. THe salesman is Richard Graidenger. It is a water based dye stain and the NGR means non grain raising. He tried a ton of different solvent based stains and the wood didn't like it, it would not take it the same every where and was not consistent coloring.

Let me know if you need any more info.

Jason
 
rcoope, I really don't remember what software he used. Being an architect student at K State though he had access to all the best. It did come to me as an iges file type, I know he had the software on his laptop when he came down. I had to have him tweak things while here so it would come across better. I think he had to reduce the resolution/tolerances as the first file I tried to open crashed the computer and it was a high end one then.

I really enjoy this type of work because it is not the norm and alot of people don't/won't mess with them. I can't take on very many though as it really is barely a break even project. Have to spread them out over time to allow me to make some money.

Jason
 








 
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