yeah the ballscrews and stuff work well.
get him to make the ends on the shafts, they are some kind of bastard steel to work and he does it pretty cheap
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Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

What CAD format do you blokes requires to do some CNC mill work?
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https://www.halfdonethings.com/

rhino preferably
's best if you can give us the whole assembly as well as the bit you want made so we can work out which parts to grab on to.
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Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

Rhino able to handle IGES (.igs) or STEP (.stp) files? Solidworks 2010 doesn't have a Rhino file format option.

This is what I want machined.



It's 132x80x20 and is HDPE.
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https://www.halfdonethings.com/

Rhino 4 will import sldprt and sldasm files now does a fine job of it too.
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www.demon50s.com - Minimoto parts
http://www.youtube.com/user/HyzerGlen - Videoooozzz

Piss easy then.
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https://www.halfdonethings.com/

thats it, enough of rhino 2.0 im downloading rhino 4.0 now
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<Patrician|Away> what does your robot do, sam
<bovril> it collects data about the surrounding environment, then discards it and drives into walls

you mean buying rhino4 legitimately right? ;-P
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Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

Doesn't everyone? <hugs legit Rhino DVD pack>

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https://www.halfdonethings.com/

your file loaded ok, hit me up on msn or something for details
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Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

Just out of interest, how would you go about fixturing that job? IMHO, cutting the front section and particularly the struts between the body and the weapon motor mount would be a complete bastard! Interested to learn something here...

possibly use a bigger than needed piece of material and mill out the interior then carve the outside with a few little tabs of material on it, then just razor them off. That's what I'd do but i have no idea lol!

CNC fixturing and rejigging the work piece is still a mystery to me

Can't say I'd make the front structure that slight, but to each their own. The fun of robots is trying things out whether they work or not
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www.demon50s.com - Minimoto parts
http://www.youtube.com/user/HyzerGlen - Videoooozzz

first guess would be to drill the bolt holes then use those to hang on to it.
put some big bolts through the bits that will get totally eaten away (don't cut the bolts, that makes bad noises and dents the bearings), to stiffen it all up then cut it down in big chunks, then do a few shallow cuts at the end to release the part, take the bolts out through the holes in the frame then go from there.

With the camera we can generally line stuff up again but if you can do it in one pass even with hurdles, you do it in one pass lol.

Personally I'd be thinking of some triangulation in that sexeh curved bit coming out the front, or perhaps filling it with something to stiffen it up, but then gut feelings seem to not work too well at this scale as to whats needed or not.
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Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

Great ideas and interesting to see two completely different answers; My first idea was to leave extra depth on the Z axis so there wa a flat plate to support all the wall parts, then cut of the base with a band saw. That has some drawbacks with the finish, so my other idea was to mill the part very undersized and fill the voids with wax or plastic before a final pass.

It just shows how many ways there are to do one CNC project.