Week 6/15 - 6/18

It's the final blog post of the year!

This week I worked on cutting out some panels on the water jet for the ROV that I had started last week. This was the final component that needed to be machined. This part didn't come without it's challenges though. When Tim designed the part he originally made it with splines because that was one of the best ways to get the correct shape he wanted. Unfortunately, the water jet can't handle splines. When creating these it looks fine in Fusion, but the water jet software is much more precise. Creating a spline creates a bunch of different micro gaps in the lines which you couldn't see on your own that heavily affect the water jet. The water jet needs a closed line to work so the gaps that splines create will not work.

I spent a couple days trying to find a solution to this issue. At first I thought that maybe I could just close the gaps in the water jet software, but that didn't work since there were just too many of them to identify. My second try was to import the file into Inkscape and see if exporting it from there might be able to fix the issue. This again did not work. When doing some research I found that AutoCAD (more software from the company that makes Fusion) has the ability to take splines and turn them into arcs. By first turning the splines into a polyline (a line formed by a series of straight line segments and arcs) I was then able to use the "explode" function to turn it into arcs and lines which do work for the water jet. This did end up working so I was finally able to start cutting the pieces.

Image of the lines and arcs created by the polyline

Final product

After finishing the cuts on Wednesday I spent some time cleaning out the CNC mill and vacuuming out all the chips. There were definitely a lot of them that had built up over the year. I the gave it a final wipe down with some WD-40 and it was all finished.

Since the year is wrapping up I want to talk about what I am planning to do next year. Similar to what I started with this year I think I might be pick up the trebuchet. Considering metal fab didn't do anything with it I still want to go back to the plywood design and create it. Another thing I want to finish is the R2D2. I did kind of stop in the middle of the year so I could focus more on learning the machining side of the shop. All the code is finished I just need to find a proper a battery and create a PCB and then controller for it. Beyond that I have no plans yet, but who knows what's to come. I'm looking forward to an exciting next year.