Alas, the Fall 2017 semester has ended. The rotary axis on our Nebula was key to the success of a few student projects. Having a talented student employee handle many of the CNC job requests did ease up on my personal CNC work load, but didn't come close to eliminating it. A quick check of the files I have on the USB drive I carry around at all times has 54 unique Aspire files and 3x that many toolpath files with a fall 2017 date stamp on them. This is after I filter the CNC requests and turn many students away as their requests can often be done more easily/efficiently on other machines.
I've come up with a good way to connect leg parts that have to appear as if they pass through a table top or shelf, but it is a challenge to create toolpaths for when the leg parts are tapered and pass through the shelf at a compound angle. Drafting techniques I learned several decades ago in high school are how I solve these CNC joinery challenges. It appears current architectural college students aren't being taught drafting as I learned it though. CAD yes, but not problem solving using drafting techniques.
We also have concluded our Nebula is not as accurate as our Meteor is. When both halves of a joint are cut on the Meteor we can get repeatable precise fits. When the same files are used to cut one half on the Meteor and the other half on the Nebula the fit is less predictable.
I've put in a request to upgrade both CNCs to air cooled spindles, and add a new Comet to replace an old CNC-Shark. The Comet we want would have the new taller gantry sides and larger gantry beam from Probotix. That should make it a machine capable of cutting taller 3D furniture parts, and perhaps stiff enough to cut aluminum parts.
4D
