Solid Bronze SBC chassis
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Yea these are just "drops" from other jobs. We nest parts and end up with fringes. Sometimes there are bronze wars for the scrap but i get first dibs. You are correct to say I machined about 20lbs of material away. I do believe it could be run'ed over with a car!!
If i were to persue the idea I am thinking casting could make it affordable and you can get sharper corners, whereas I am limited to an endmill of 3/8 diameter that can do 1" deep pocket. I had to undercut the corners for the square board.(Absolute minimal clearance.)
I am going to have to thin the sidewalls some for SMA antenna mounting. Side pocket of sorts. I am still debating whether to add the VGA connector. Also i pocketed for the 2 front switches but might just leave a hole. I was originally going to make a small plunger for power.
I considered sandblasting it to a matte finish. That or make it modern with radius-ed corners and shine it up.
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@Phishfry:
Yea these are just "drops" from other jobs. We nest parts and end up with fringes. Sometimes there are bronze wars for the scrap but i get first dibs. You are correct to say I machined about 20lbs of material away. I do believe it could be run'ed over with a car!!
If i were to persue the idea I am thinking casting could make it affordable and you can get sharper corners, whereas I am limited to an endmill of 3/8 diameter that can do 1" deep pocket. I had to undercut the corners for the square board.(Absolute minimal clearance.)
I am going to have to thin the sidewalls some for SMA antenna mounting. Side pocket of sorts. I am still debating whether to add the VGA connector. Also i pocketed for the 2 front switches but might just leave a hole. I was originally going to make a small plunger for power.
I considered sandblasting it to a matte finish. That or make it modern with radius-ed corners and shine it up.
I think you should consider acid etching it. Acid etched bronze is fantastic.
We've considered cast aluminum a couple times. (It wouldn't be my first cast aluminum enclosure, just never here.)
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That sounds like a good way to get a beastie image on it. I was considering making a relief mask and sandblasting some design or logo..
Muratic Acid and Peroxide looks easy enough. -
Heck the metal came from right up the road from you in Dallas. Delta Centrifugal is who we use. We used to buy it per job now we started stocking it. It was much cheaper to buy a big chunk and profit$. We are using SAE660 bearing bronze as we do lots of big thrust washers and carrier bearings. The Omax waterjet shoots water and garnett at 60K psi and it is pretty unbelievable. We use it for simple jobs such as cork and rubber gaskets (was very time consuming) to pretty intricate parts.We made some large gears for our old railway were we tippled up some 4" Steel for a 12" Thick bull gear that was pretty impressive. We cross pinned it and welded the crosspins and it has an internal keyway..She pulls like a 500T load uphill. Saved our company alot of money.
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Got that bull gear story wrong some. Originally we were doing 4" plate x 3 plates for 12" overall but we did a test cut and 4" deep gear tooth profile was kerfed' too much so we scaled back to 3" Plate x 4 each for a good gear tooth profile. Was like 28" dia. Shaft was 8" You should see the pit for our oldest railway. It looks like a mechanical museum.
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I'm familiar with waterjets. This is right up the road: http://www.techshop.ws/austin_round_rock.html
I'm a member. They have a Flow Mach 2 Waterjet (2031b model, so 10' by 6' work envelope.)http://www.flowwaterjet.com/~/media/Images/waterjet/waterjet/product%20detail/mach-2/pop-ups/PopUp_Mach2_2031b.ashx?la=en
I've made several things on it (including tooling for some of what we do in the build room here.) Mostly sheet stock though.
I'm … Let's say I'm "familiar" with CNC mills, too. My son just built a 1m x 1m CNC router for his high school robotics club. He's a very technical boy.
A long, long time ago, I was LA City, State of California, ASME (B31.1/B31.3 pressure piping) and AWS (D.1, D17.1, but not D15.1 Railroad) certified as a welder, too. But that was the 80s, before I got into computers.
Back then I held a well driller's license in 4 states and carried both general electrician's and certified plumbers cards (licenses) in NV (CA, AZ and UT all grant reciprocity for both), too.
(Obviously we do the laser etching on a CNC setup in-housse.)
We do a fair mount of CAD, too. This is a near-future product: http://imgur.com/Hznt5Ah
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Obviously we do the laser etching on a CNC setup in-house
I Was wondering about that. Do you have the case fabbed in the US? I am talking about the ADI line.
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Yes.
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All the more reason to support them!!!
We have a Haas Mini Mill and a small Haas Lathe. I am mainly big lathe(36"x40'L) guy and specialty work as well as nightshift supervisor. My boss is the Foreman but he does most all the CAE/CAD in Solidworks on dayshift. It is so expensive we only have one seat. We use BobCAD on the floor rackmount and I hated it the day they bought that software. They need to upgrade us to MasterCAM….
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So do you bring your own material to the Austin TechShop and just pay for machine time??
Our Omax machine has a accounting system whereas it will tell you what the part cost based on labor, garnett and machine time. I was pretty impressed with that.
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The second Haas we bought is respectable..
https://www.haascnc.com/we_spec1.asp?id=VF-6/40&sizeID=50_64INCH_VMC#gsc.tab=0editfixed linkTo correct machine
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Here is my old girl…Very Similar machine..
http://www.gqmachinery.com/NEWSITE/lathes/3650.htm -
We actually have second older lathe backed up to the Poreba lathe and laser aligned chuck to chuck and can run 45' long shafts. Some Carolina stuff my boss came up with….I have literally had to thread from the other machine with the chuck spinning so I could have the leadscrew turning. Tool upside down and on the backside. Real fun to stop both with a lousy helper..Where 30 years experience comes in. Knowing what you can get away with!!
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Here is the old girl we use just for an "Lathe extender" it is so bulky and unwieldy.
http://www.wismet.com/product-details?productId=9636
Mounted end to end with the Poreba. Flip the tailstock around and hope for the best!
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We have an 1954 American Lathe that is still used every day. It is a haus. We put in junk Summit lathes(plastic gears) every 10 years while this thing just works! She is leaking some though..
http://www.nrmachinesales.com/lathes/l3000162.htm
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Here are the Summits. They look good but around 3 years handles start falling off and other fun stuff.
http://www.summitmt.com/product-category/manual-lathes/
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