Rhino
Designing in Rhinoceros
A new software was introduced to us today called rhino which is used for 2D as well as 3D drawings. I is a very powerful tool for making models for laser cutting, milling wax and for 3D printing. Luciano asked us to download and install the software. As It was a windowls/mac only software, I had some trouble. I tried to install it in Wine in vein.
So I shifted to one of the windows system in FabLab and installed and tried some tools to design in 2d and 3D. It was quite fascinating to do such things with such ease. I hope they release a Linux version soon.
ShopBot
As we didn't use the ShopBot till day Luciano decided to try it.
He quickly drew a simple design in Rhino and exported it as .dxf file, opened it Vcarve and gave the profiles and the drill bit/tool used for each job. As I am quite familiar with the machine it was easy to follow. The things I learned new are how to determine the pass depth, which is half of the dia of the bit used, what is feed rate, plunge rate, stepover etc.
After completing the design and creating the profiles for cutting and drilling, we passed on the files to the jobcontrol software of ShopBot which did the rest.
shopbot in action