A fun fast project with a Neighbor, making a lathe accessory mount

[da-kengineer-meister]

A neighbor of mine, from the next block over, showed up one night (Nov/2019) with some CAD (Cardboard Aided Design) work in-hand asking if we could knock out a part on the plasma table. It was an intriguing part and It took me a couple minutes to wrap my brain around it. I grabbed a steel rule and pair of calipers and turned his ‘CAD’ into the other kind of CAD. After that I used the CAD system to write some G-Code, ran it through a CNC-plasam ‘aware’ post-post processor and out to the garrage we went. Always fun to knock out a quick weekend project on the AVIDcnc.

The first image, below is the original ‘CAD’ model.

In the image below, we had roughly traced the part onto the steel with a sharpie to make sure it was going to fit on the piece the way we were nesting it. Also, you can see we made a few changes in the computer version of the CAD model from the cardboard one.

We did a little bending, shaping and gentle coaxing with a hammer, and then my neighbor put the MIG welder thrrough its paces…

A quick test fit check on the lathe he is fixing up / repairing.

My neighbor ran it back to his place for a test fit and then over the following week in the evenings at his place, he finished grinding / shaping and welding to blend in the radius. After that he got a coat of primer on it, then finish painted it and hit it with a seal coat and finally mounted it on his lathe.

This project came out great, and it was a bunch of fun to be a part of it. My neighbor really nailed it with the CAD ‘model’ and the welding/blending, and the finishing work is superb! With it fully boxed in and welded out, even though this is only 16Ga. mild steel, that part is incredibly strong and will likely last as long as the lathe…

-Kenneth

[subnoize]

Looks great, Kenneth. All of your projects look very pro.

I have to admit plasma cutting is just fun. It is just slightly harder than 3D printing. It is also very fast. Almost scary fast sometimes

I encourage the woodies on this forum to consider adding plasma to their setup. Just like with 3D printers, plasma is another great tool to make jigs and fixtures easily.

For the aircraft builders a plasma cutter is more than just jig and fixture maker, the small HAZ using modern plasma machines means little cleanup for 4130 and even aluminum plate and sheet work.

Always fun to see pro looking results.

[djdelorie]

@subnoize

I encourage the woodies on this forum to consider adding plasma to their setup.

Because who doesn’t want to be pushed over the slippery slope…

[Wateague]

Great job , I just use a spindle and bits.
I use my shop as a hobby.
I think that my popularity for projects is that I don’t charge anything.

[da-kengineer-meister]

Thanks guys! This is a hobby for me as well. Okay, okay, this is a background hobby. My primary hobby is robotics and I’ve been working with CNC since the late '80s. I am reasonably new to both plasma and the AVIDcnc machines, but it wasn’t too much of a learning curve given how much time I’ve spent on other machines. On the hobby side of things, I’ve done easily 300-projects on the AVIDcnc now. Some were simple and some were complex multi-week beasts. When one adds in the truly massive number of projects I have done for neighbors and Friends you start to get an idea that this machine is running almost every weekend whether it is spindle or plasma. (And often quite a few late nights during the week as well)

[davidcnc]

With a quick glance I was thinking this was about to be an interesting snow board. Came out great!