Arc droid

[CaddmannQ]

Over my half of my engineering work for 45 years was done with computers, in the drawing and design stages, and in manufacturing as well. Learning to do basic programing of those things was one of the first classes I took in industrial and technical education. That was 1973, now over 50 years ago.

So it really warms my heart to see CNC programming brought to the common man, in such packages, which eliminate the need for a lot of prerequisite knowledge on the programming side of things.

People who know me wonder why I got out of the computer end of this business and now I’m out there making parts with a sawzall, a file, drill press, a Dremel and an angle grinder.

I need the exercise more than I used to. If I was in a hurry I would definitely choose CNC.

[dubby]

I like it as well, the easier to use CNC stuff. Considering a computer printer has been around for ages and full of code, it has always astounded me that CNC wasn't more affordable. Three-dimensional printers have come down in price for a quality machine. Machine tools are still way outta reach for most.

Even used equipment is pricey if you don't have a plan to use it. I saw a HAAS mini-mill on a local board today for $14k and it was 24 years old. I was real tempted to go look but the reality is that I'm not going to put the effort into setting it up for production type stuff. I would like to have one for my holsters though, but at $65 each total it's gonna take an awful long time to see any profit only doing one a week.

[toprecycler]

Played around with the droid a bit tonight. I started with a cad drawing from my computer. Had a couple tries before getting something to cut. Thought I’d have to convert the drawing from the DXF format that my Turbocad program can save it as, but figured out that I can just use DXF formatting.

There is a lot of different parameters that I can tweak. It will take a bit of learning to get them dialed in, but so far it coming along pretty well. I also drew up the drain cover that prompted me to purchase the arc droid. I cut a sample part out of thin steel sheet, for customer to test fit. If he likes the joke layout and size, then I need to cut it out of some 1/8” Stainless Sheet.

The smiley faces I drew up in turbo cad, and then played around with changing the size of them within the arc droid tablet. Just was trying different things to understand the machine.




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[Whitetrash]

As Red used to say "Rollin Rollin"

[JohnBoy]

following with great interest, I think these are an ingenious machine

[dubby]

That's a pretty darn good first test run, and shows promise for the machine.

I like the smiley face covers. I had something similar on a bumper hitch cover once, except it had the extended fingers from the 'less adult' bulletin board systems. Was a real pain to cut out freehand.

[toprecycler]

I made a different design tonight, will hand them out to friends at church.

This was thinner stock. About 1/16”. I wasn’t able to get it cutting as clean as I would like, yet. But it might be I have to get smaller tips for the torch, if available for lighter sheet metal. I still have a lot to learn to get the details dialed in.

But I’m having fun.





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[Whitetrash]

I've been watching a lot of the developers videos picking up tips and whatnot

[CaddmannQ]

Originally Posted by toprecycler

I made a different design tonight, will hand them out to friends at church.

This was thinner stock. About 1/16”. I wasn’t able to get it cutting as clean as I would like, yet. But it might be I have to get smaller tips for the torch, if available for lighter sheet metal. I still have a lot to learn to get the details dialed in.
But I’m having fun.
Attachment 172086
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That’s not just a small bonus. Fun is very motivating.

[Whitetrash]

So, I have been watching a ton of videos sort of separating Wheat from Chaff as I find the guys that have this system sorted out. I was watching a video explaining the using the arcdroid corner tool to set up burning a hole in a piece of square tube by establishing a home corner then bringing the stylus to a corner on the tube and programming the hole coordinates the based on the tube dimensions. A thought occurred to me why could you not make brass corner points from brass bolts on your table and locate from them? The other thing I'm pondering I have an assortment of small tanks including CO2 fire extinguishers and scuba tanks. I'm thinking one of those can be converted into a desiccant air drier depending what threads hold the nozzle on. If I can build a brass fitting with an inlet line that runs to near the bottom and the outlet pulling off the top. Fill it with desiccant and figure out a drain fitting maybe?