Saturday, September 17, 2016

Delrin Soft Jaws - Part 1

Is it possible to make soft jaws from plastic materials like Delrin? How much will they deform when tightening a vise? Will they work well enough on parts where you are taking light cuts?



While looking for small blocks of material that can be used for milling some sample pieces, we found some Delrin which was the correct height and thickness. They only needed to be cut to length, and have the counter bore holes added.

We did this easily in Fusion 360 and performed the milling on the Tormach 440. We'll continue this discussion later, once we have a chance to test them on a real part.

Until then, here's a little video of the machine in action. 

Follow the progress on Instagram. Autodesk.mfg account or my personal account.


Tuesday, September 13, 2016

IMTS Part 1

Today's post is going to be a really short one. We are at the IMTS show in Chicago this week. You can find us at the Autodesk booth E-3222. One goal is to be able to do some follow up posts after the show, what's new, what was drawing excitement, etc. But until then, my good friend Lars from www.cadcamstuff.com used a day walking the show to put together a video for everyone. 

Take a look and enjoy



Monday, September 5, 2016

First Look - Zen Labs CNC Mill

Guess what? We have a small CNC mill here at the Zen Labs. It's a Tormach 440. Capable of milling hard materials like steel. 

I made a very rough video showing the mill, and doing a simple engraving. We will have more detailed updates in the future, but I was excited that everything was working, and wanted to get a quick video up.

See the video here:



What should we mill? Post your ideas in the comments.