Glen-L.com

I've spent the last year of my life Learning CAD (DELFT!ship). I've designed what seems like a million drafts just to delete each and every one to start over. I finally got through those growing pains and settled on a model. Little did I know that CAD is worthless without CAM. So now I'm working feverishly get my files ready for the next stage. Ahhh... the next step.

If I've figured out this CAM stuff, my next step is the CNC router. The router is one thing I definitely need help with. I'm hoping there is a hobbyist in the Seattle area that is willing to help me cut out my boat pieces. I build with thermoplastic and it cuts just like wood. On this boat, I'm using HD polyethylene with a thickness up to 0.25" and sheet size of 4x10 ft (or 4x8). Please post or PM if you would like to help.

Dave

Probably cost prohibitive (especially with shipping), but you might want to check these guys out: http://www.emachineshop.com/

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Jeff

My Celerity build.

dave i might be wrong but i dont think a hobbiest is going to have a set up like you would need to run 5x 10 or even 4x8 sheets an over arm cnc router set up that could run material that size is way to exspensive for someone to buy thats just going to use it occasionaly try the local cabinet shops you may find one thats willing to run your parts for what your willing to pay or what you can afford to pay heck you may find one that will do it for a cold beer if they are intersted in your project

Dave, there is a fairly large community of NC router guys in the ShopBot group.
http://www.shopbottools.com/

might as well see if anyone in that group is located near you and has an Alpha or larger table to help? They are a fine group of guys and spread out all over, likely they'll have someone in your area.

One caution, depending on your CAD output, that is the actual lines from D'Ship into a full vector format ALL, that is ALL NC tables (may) need some 'spline' editing to produce completely fair curves. D'Ship will produce curves with 'hogs' and angle points in small scale vessels that do require some work to clean up in some cases- I use ACAD 'spline' tools and Rhino curves and splines or SCAN2CAD to work up the various curves from D'Ship to insure I'm not working with unfair lines. Just a caution, might want to cut a 1/2 or 1/3 scale model from door skin ply before cutting the plastic?

I weld these panels with a hot glue gun and find that I've avoided some very Expen$$ive error$ because I was able to cut small scale and then refine the curves before moving to full size.

Cheers,

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Kevin Morin

Thanks for the input. I got my sheets cut out last week. I found a retired cabinet maker that does odd jobs on the side. It was a commercial shop, but he was reasonably priced (4 hours in the the shop for $250) and really good to work with. He coached me a bit on file clean up and had the patients to work with a first-timer! That put me at ease.

KM - files are a bit messy coming out of DELFT (very short line segments). Maybe that is always the case with these types of CAD programs. It took me a while to figure out CAMing (with CAMBAM), but once I did I was able to combine short line segments into arcs and the like. Finally I got my files in reasonable shape. Two spots cased stalls on the CNC (which was a pretty high caliber machine and processor) so I could have been a little more aggressive in CAMing. Next time it'll be perfect! Ha, always next time.

http://hphotos-iad1.fbcdn.net/hphotos-a ... 1079_n.jpg

I gave up after a few tries. Without an instructor I'm just about as confused as the little boy that dropped his Black Jack gum on the Chicken house floor.

Someday I'll run into somebody local who'll help.

thudpucker, I do have a set of basic tutorials I wrote for Delftship (older version now), they're about 10 exercises that introduce you to the tools, the program and the overall methods of doing some of the steps in forming a boat and shaping one

I send them free to anyone who wants them, and of the dozens who have taken me up on the offer I think they've helped most people get some basic work patterns started to kick start their design of boats in Delftship.

k.morin@kmmail.net drop me a note if you want these exercises(?) most of them are reduced to *.pdf files so they're not huge but if you don't keep the email box emptied, they can jam up the space.

Cheers,
Kevin Morin

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Kevin Morin

dave: I am thinking about using CNC to cut some ruder blanks for a boat I'm building but thought maybe more efficient to have some else to cad cam work as I have the DXF files (know they will need to be "tuned" up. Thought maybe the guy to saw in Seattle might be interested? roughly 18'' by 72'' by 2'' envelope. I thought it would take too much time to learn enough to be able to use CNC machine compared to using my time just building!