Anything Manufacturing - Small to Medium Scale Metal Work (CAD/CAM included!)

Unless I can convince my mom to come over and stay with the kiddo, the actual thought of going wouldn't be until October.

My mom lives over 3hrs away and doesn't even drive, so she'd have to have the time off and my brother would bring her. Still, something I'll ask to see if it can happen sooner than later.

(For those that don't know, although I am retired, I'm a stay at home dad for our 2 year old. Wife works M-F as a SPED teacher)

 

I was aware. I was trying to figure out how you would arrange the logistics.

I'm retired with no kids and can not figure out how I'd be in the wind for 12+ hours.

 

I'm pretty good at long drives fortunately, but my wife isn't

Let me rephrase, she is good at long drives but she likes to make a few stops for snacks or a pit stop whereas I will drive all day non-stop until I get to my destination.

I remember when we had our Lunchtable Meet in Moab and my friend and I drove 14 hours straight, only stopping for gas (and a piss break during a gas fill up).

 

Wife got home at a regular time today from work so I took advantage of it and thought I'd cut a bit of 16 gauge. I'm just using left over scrap I've got laying around but it's got plenty of space for a lot of cut outs.

Rather than do the traditional "square with holes", I thought I'd skip right into the Pointer design and toy with pierce delays.

https://youtu.be/6WOy9a0rWvs?si=KTvZGn-9aCKuzzt1

(Not to worry, after I watched this video, I adjusted the slack for my cables on the Z axis assembly)

I gotta say, I do love the parking feature that I leave enabled for after every cut.

Here are the results of those cutouts.





The numbers here refer to a few things - pierce time (for initial height/THC), cut height, and pierce time. I even toyed with THC delay but it made no difference with the actual pierce itself.

I also messed with ignition and pierce heights and found it best to leave them both at the same height.

And for those wondering how those screens look like in Optimum, here they are.



What's nice about the Charts section here is that I can save changes shown below so I don't have to remember arc voltages, cut heights, and all the other details outside of just cut speed.

 

Half-tempted to buy some 16 gauge tomorrow and run this file, afraid that I may have some drops due to the longer pierce delay still.



Taking donations if y'all want to see me try

 

You lucky. My fab shop is closed Saturdays.

I can't count the times I've been in a holding pattern until Monday...

Then they do the Internet orders from the weekend, I'm lucky to get materials until late Tuesday.

 

I'm crazy spoiled in that regard.

They're never busy when I get there, and it takes me longer to go there (14-18mins) than it does to order, pay for, get it cut, and load the steel into my vehicle.

Since there's a lot of industrial stuff out here, there's a ton of metal shops but I stick to this one because I get a discount due to being a business and having my license.

 

Customer Service is such a rarity these days... gotta take advantage of the good ones when you find them!

I ordered a ball cap with my logo on it from a local small business that I have done business with before... it's now been more than 3 weeks and they still haven't produced a single color embroidered logo that I supplied the artwork for.

I made it clear to them today they will no longer get my business.

 

Geez dude that freaking sucks.

And I was just sharing with someone about even taking the small jobs seriously.

 

First set of internal stiffeners cut out on the table; got a bit of beveling (minor) but it's consistent which tells me it's my consumables.

Only thing that sucks about Optimum is not having a pierce counter







My master set's main parts are bent and welded, so I don't exactly have a flat set to compare it to.



However, comparing it with the small 3 hole mount it's damn near perfect.

 

Oh yeah, everything looks to match.

 

Are you still running fine cut consumables?

 

For 11 gauge and smaller, yes.

For 3/16" and up just regular mechanized

 

@zippsub9 Cutting a bunch of good stuff I take it?!

 

Not currently, just trying to get caught up with projects from over winter. I am PTAD for the last two weeks so not around to get anything done. I cut a few small things for around the house…adjustable floating foundation base and some art/deco stuff.

 

10/10 would shit in your house.

 

Bwahahaha!

Reminds me of the bear and the rabbit taking a dump in the woods joke

Bear ask the rabbit if he ever has trouble with shit sticking to his fur.

Rabbit says " never".

Bear reaches over and wipes his ass with the rabbit.

 

I've had a few members on FB ask about the workflow with Optimum so thought I'd make a short video.

https://youtu.be/UcjhsRx7mv4?si=9sVnYrB0rSZ63Bbs

 

Just got off the phone with STV, man they're listening.

They had a discussion recently about items I brought up and one of them was actually about a pierce counter! Just updated my software as an update was made available so now I can manage my pierce count within Optimum.

The next one is implementing rules that Fusion 360 has as well as disabling THC for individual layers within Optimum's CAM.

Things are happening

 

And confirmed!



And the fact that it cuts this well consistently on different parts of the table is freaking wild.





There's a bit of dross on the small holes which is normal for this setup.