Tale of the hungry dinosaur

[lockeyone]

Well it was early evening and I was sitting at my computer catching up on things when I saw this mean looking dinosaur come in my shop. I saw tattle tale signs that she had not eaten for awhile. I helped her up on my counter so it would be easier to talk. She explained it was a few million years since she had eaten and wondered if I had any critters to spare. Well I said, I have a couple of cats! Not mine, they belong to my daughter but I am sure she wouldn’t miss one. She thought that would be a splendid idea. So we waltzed into the living area and I introduced them. After she seen the cats she thought they may be more than she could eat after a few million years so decided to seek her long awaited meal elsewhere. I told she was welcome to spend the night out of the cold and she agreed.

I got this from one of the forums, may have been cnczone and was set up for 3/8". I had to play in my other software to shrink it. Didn't quite understand how to do it in VCarve and Tony emailed me information on how to do it. I did have to do a bunch of cleanup in VCarve. I swear I like this software more and more as I use it. The nodes feature came in really handy to close vectors and this drawing had lots. My guess there are many features I haven't begun to use yet.

.21 inch Plexiglas using my new VCarve Pro software. 1/8" up spiral router bit set on 16,000rpms at 30ipm. Should have taken about 1 hr to cuts parts. I broke a couple of router bits and had to reset a few times. Wouldn't you know it, this run has 30 pieces to it and the bits didn't break until the last 3. Kind of a fun project. Probably hardest part was assembly, no instructions and the pictures of other dinosaurs we different but just as starved.

Norm

[CRFultz]

Nice work Norm

if you like cutting the plastic , maybe you can try a o-flute. they work pretty good on lexan.

Nice story as well

Thanks for sharing.

and give that poor dino a cheeseburger...she's startin to look like paris hilton

Chuck

[lockeyone]

I have some single flute (not O) bits I used but they dont' seem to cut as nice as the up spiral. Another thing I learned is the direction of cut, seems sometime couterclockwise works better than clockwise. Again this might have something to do with speed. The spiral bit I broke was 1/8" with 1/4 shank. Another thing I should mention is that the first 27 parts I didn't use tabs. The way I usually clamp is with back to back clamps which leaves a 5/8" space underneath. Then I slip a 5/8" spacer underneath to stabilze the sheet. I was nervous with the smaller parts thinking they were almost getting sucked up in the vacume system. The last three parts I did use tabs which was much nicer except I probably made them too big for these little parts. I think it was 1/4" wide and 1/8" deep. One of the things I suspect happened to break the bit was a build up of plastic on the bit. When I did my dust skirt I would stop the router long enough to take a pair of pliers and squeeze the melted plastic and it would shatter off the bit, then continue on. I think I was busy trying to put that darn dinosaur together as eash peice came free.