Recent Articles
Rumors of my death are largely exaggerated…..
It’s been WAY too long since I have posted anything here…. and for that, I apologize. Time is my worst enemy, and the number of projects far exceeds the hours in the day to get them done. That said, I will be posting a lot more often here, and have a lot of exciting news [...]
Is This You?
Is This You? O.K… I’m going to climb way out on a limb, and see if I can guess who you are. You like to build things, make things, and fix things. You’ve got a home workshop, with a few power tools, quite a few hand tools, and a stack of raw materials. You really [...]
Roughing and Finishing… The Easy Way
If you are doing sign making, or plaque making (or anything else that involves a lot of pocket cutting, where you want a good finish on the cut), you’ll want to follow the “professional” method and do it with a rough cutting (oversize) pass, and a final finish pass. The easy way to do this [...]
Birch Plywood Vendors
One of the trickier parts of actually going “into production” on the boat kits was finding sources for the material. This 1/6 scale Crackerbox boat is built from thin birch plywood… in 1/32″, 1/16″ and 1/8″ thicknesses. After LOTS of research, it became obvious that I was going to have to buy the material from [...]
Ooops! I forgot to share the links….
If you’re curious about the R/C boat kitting project, you can check out what I am up to at http://www.soaringstuff.com/crackerbox.html The Crackerbox is a popular full size racing class… Basically, it is a small (16′ or so) flat bottomed boat, with a huge V-8 engine. The rules require that there be a driver and a [...]
CNC Production Workflow
One physical disability that I have always had to deal with is my stunning inability to pronounce that “N-O” word. As a result of this severe speech impediment, I’ve found myself in the radio controlled boat kitting business. An old friend of mine, who has always been an avid boat racer talked me into cutting [...]
CNC Workflow – Concept to Drawing to CAD to CAM to Cutting
Cutting parts with a CNC machine is a drastically simpler process than it used to be. But it is still easy to get sidetracked, confused, or downright lost if you don’t set up some standards for the organization of your workflow. Depending on your memory is just too frustrating, and even if you can dependably [...]
Automation Getting Automated!
I’ve fallen a bit behind on blog entries….. partially because of the Thanksgiving Holiday, and partially because I’ve been really busy in the workshop and studio. I’ve moved up a level in sophistication with the CNC router, and now have semi-automated tool positioning. Gone is the setting of the Z axis tool height with little [...]
Look Out Lockheed… Here We Come!
I’ve started experimenting with some exciting new software from the amazing Stefano Duranti, in Italy. We’ve been using Stefano’s Profili2 program for a long time… to design model airplane wings, plot out wing ribs, and even generate cutting paths for CNC router cut wing parts. But the latest thing from Stefano is DevFus … a [...]
CNC Information
As we’ve said repeatedly, one of the big problems in getting started in the CNC hobby isn’t the lack of information… it is the Tsunami of information that is available on the web. A simple Google search for “CNC” turns up a paltry 34 million pages that you might want to browse! As you’ve probably [...]
