Nesting pieces on a leftover piece of ply

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SekA
Posts: 32
Joined: Fri Nov 27, 2009 1:24 pm

Nesting pieces on a leftover piece of ply

Post by SekA »

My recent experience in words and photos.
Last year I have built Cyclone dust separator. It's body is consisted from thin metal dust bin bought in the office supply shop. When running the separator thin metal walls tend to buckle in due to high suction effect produced by the vacuum cleaner. Once the vacuum stops thin metal walls bend back into their original position. This would not matter if there was not for a loud bang both times the vacuum cleaner is turned ON and OFF. Annoying as if there was not enough sound due to mill process itself.
Therefore I have decided to reinforce the dust bin with ply insert on two levels in height. Each insert is consisted of three 12 mm thick marine ply segments. As the price tag for the marine ply is set high I decided to use a leftover piece from previous job. Photo 1 shows that the leftover is irregular in shape. It’s shape was a challenge to me as an VCarve owner. Namely VCarve can nest pieces within boundary. I wanted to try how good it is in case of irregular shaped boundary. Photo 2 shows how the dust bin buckles in due vacuum.
How did I do it in VCarve?
First I took a photo of the shape taking care to be at center of the leftover piece. The photo taken was not good enough for VCarve to successfully trace it. Photo 3 shows photo after editing it in the software called Paint.NET. As you can see I have painted the piece in black. Tracing of such photo was success. After tracing I did some measurements of the real piece and compared the measurements in VCarve in order to check for gross dimensional discrepancies. Only minor tweaking of the shape where needed in VCarve (Move, Scale ,Rotate selection icon) in order to satisfy my criteria. As I have blackened also some shades that consisted the Photo 2 I deleted nodes where and when I felt they were they were obsolete.
Once that I had the ply plate outline I have imported vectors – my pieces- in the file and nested them as described in Tutorial video on Vectrics web support page (First selected vector actas nesting boundary). Photo 4 shows nesting of pieces after first attempt. At the same time on the photo I want to show where I have put tabs in order to keep the pieces in place after milling process.
May I tell you that I was not successful to nest those vectors manually?
Photo 5 shows original settings when nesting for the first time.
As I was aware that I play with inaccurate ply piece shape I wanted to add more border gap to act as safety feature.
Photo 6 shows final nesting and Photo 7 shows milled pieces and Photo 8 installed product.
By the way. I found out that the dust separator separates only about 40 – 60 percent of dust I produce. It will require my attention to refine it’s construction.
As I was impressed with the VCarve feature of nesting pieces within irregular shape I decided to share my experience with other forum readers. I know that many times software purchase candidates are among them.
According to my past experience I highly recommend VCarve.
Regards from a very happy user
Aleksander Sekirnik
Slovenia
Attachments
Photo 1.jpg
Photo 2.jpg
Photo 3.jpg
Photo 4.jpg
Photo 5.jpg
Photo 6.jpg

SekA
Posts: 32
Joined: Fri Nov 27, 2009 1:24 pm

Re: Nesting pieces on a leftover piece of ply

Post by SekA »

Adding missing photos
Attachments
Photo 7.jpg
Photo_8.jpg

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Adrian
Vectric Archimage
Posts: 14544
Joined: Thu Nov 23, 2006 2:19 pm
Model of CNC Machine: ShopBot PRS Alpha 96x48
Location: Surrey, UK

Re: Nesting pieces on a leftover piece of ply

Post by Adrian »

Thanks for posting, an interesting read.

If you had taken the photo without flash it would probably have traced directly in VCarve as the colour would be consistent. Personally I would have used the polyline tool and drawn over the photo by hand.

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