Toys making toys - V.1 Jellyfish

I was fortunate enough to become friends with Bill Young. He works for Shopbot and after a few conversations we realized that we had a common interest... CNC fabrication.  So Bill put me with a SCAD alumni, Jeanne who graciously allowed me to see how I chould fit the Handibot into my classes. This is a rough documentation of the process. 

I had a weird class load this quarter. I was teaching computer modeling to both Industrial Design students and Jewelry students. I wanted to create an example of how students could use a well known ID fabrication technique and modify it in such a way that our jewelry designers could create complex forms in a fraction of the time.

Because summer was coming up I wanted to make something the everyone in Savannah would be familiar with. A jellyfish

So vacuum forming- we use it a bunch and its pretty straight forward. Or we could take a matched die forming process. The first thing I needed to do was make the matching molds.

I made the tool paths using RhinoCAM- took a bit to locate the post processor for the Handibot but when I did it worked perfectly the first time. It was also really nice to double check how the piece would cut before I went ahead and actually did it.

I didn't want to spend all day for the Handibot to cut out everything so I got it to do a roughing pass and a parallel finishing pass within a region. I marked it out and took off the excess with a sawsall.

So we are now ready to go. I ran into a bit of a problem when I was getting ready to start. It is true that the machine has an 6 x 8 cutting bed but the height of my item kept on running into the carriage. It would be nice it the front part of the carriage ( the part that my index finger is touching) would arc out a bit. Giving me a little more room and retaining structural integrity.  Anywho,  I chamfered the edges and it did the trick.

After about 30 minutes of cutting I realized that I was in a fog of MDF dust. Now I'm a big fan of MDF. I feel that it is the sausage of the wood world and  hickory smoked sausage is just delicious. However, I needed to make some changes fast.

Step One: Cover computer with the nearest cooler. Check

Step Two: Cover or shroud the machine with a tarp to keep dust from covering everything. Check

The parallel finishing pass went much faster and with much less MDF dust.

So on to the other side of the mold. I chose to go with a 24 gauge piece of copper as part to be formed. I gave the two shapes ( the concave and the convex shape) a .02 offset to allow for the material thickness. This half was a lot easier than the previous.

This is where my expertise ends and where my leaning in Jewelry begins. I was thinking that we could fasten the edges of the metal down, put the wood and metal sandwich in a hydraulic press and just go for it. Not exactly how it works. My students annealed the piece then we started to press. 

To my suprise we went back and forth many times. Heat then press, heat then press. It wasnt part of the plan but we got wrinkles along the edges. I suppose I prefer wrinkles rather than tears.

There was some creaking as we pressed further I think it was more the compression of the MDF rather than the stretching of the metal. Thus we had to get the metal unstuck each time. 

We would press, remove the metal, flatten out the wrinkles, anneal and repeat. And this is what we got. 

In hind sight. This is what I should had done, it's a learning process.

so next time I'll just make one of these

Now that I have the basic shape. I am venturing into uncharted territory... machining metal

I went back into RhinoCAM and programmed it to run a pocketing pass on the offset surface ( taking into account the thickness of the metal).

This time I screwed down the metal to the mold so it wouldn't dance on me. I set the origin, slowed the router down and we went. 

So here is our Finished Jellyfish.