Working with cutting machines
Posted: Sun Feb 18, 2018 11:57 am
I thought it might be interesting for others to read about our experiences with cutting machines and making buildings. We (Tony Williams and myself) have been 'tinkering' with various cutting machines and a 3-D printer for a while now and I think that now we have found the best way that works for us - it might not suit everyone though.
On the other forum a while back there was a lot of interest in Silhouette cutting machines and the likes of Mike Trice and Jason in Canada produced some interesting stuff so I bought one. My intention was to use it to build the signal box for Slattocks, especially the windows but experience proved that this idea was flawed. The material i chose was of course 10thou HIPS plastic but it was just too thin and it required so many passes to cut through. If I had tried card it might have worked much better but back then I didn't think of using that medium as I discovered another problem with the machine that i couldn't live with and that was the fact it didn't make square corners.
This picture of the Slattocks signal box was taken prior to completion and you may just be able to see the problem on the signal box door where the glazing bars are not at the same level. This door I used but I actually etched all the rest of the windows as this would have looked ridiculous if the corners were like that.
From there I go interested in what could be achieved with 3-D printers. Bob Gledhill from MERG had a stand at a Scalefour North and after that I asked him if he would come to the Manchester club and do a talk on 3-D printing. He agreed and we saw some interesting examples of what could be achieved using a 3-D printer. I duly purchased a Colido Print-Rite £200 printer knowing it wasn't a high quality producer but thought we might be able to get something decent out of it for buildings. I tried doing some windows but I was disappointed with the finish - that's not to say better results could be achieved but I wasn't prepared to spend a lot of time getting the quality up as I was still thinking I may not get there in the end.
Bob told us about Fablabs and I learned there was one in Manchester. Fablabs are places that are run by the Institute of Manufacturing that have lots of different machines which can be used for free by the public at the weekend. All you need to do is attend the induction course which covers the health and safety aspects of all the machines, which again is free and takes about 30 minutes. Once you have done that you are eligible to run any of the machines and there are lots of different sorts of them. After visiting for the first time I came back gobsmacked and realised that the laser cutting machine they had opened up a lot of doors for us.
I duly did the course and started to learn how to use the Fablab laser cutter. They will supply MDF and ply on site for very reasonable prices but only down to 3mm thick so I bought some of my own thinner MDF and plywood. I drew up cutting plans for making the terraced houses that we need for Slattocks initially using a shell of 2mm MDF with a thin ply overlay for the brickwork. This was taking a long time to cut and ate into the 1 hour slots that the Fablab usually allow. There are booking facilities and it was only by 2 of us going and booking 2 slots together that we could get it done.
We progressed onto the next logical step which was thinking about making interleaved corners with the bricks already engraved onto the MDF but after the session we came away with sloppy joints. I spent a while tinkering with the drawings to see if we could perfect this and eventually managed to find out what the correct settings were for this machine to get this right using the materials we had.
At about the same time I came across Giles Favell's work on a narrow gauge forum (I know, don't mention it) and he has been making some stunning stuff which looked like what I wanted to do. http://bygiles.com/ I know he is working in 7mm but there is some interesting stuff there in 4mm too. He is using Trotec which is a plastic, laser cutters don't like HIPS plastic which is what Plasticard is made from, they give off dangerous fumes. Now Giles was using a machine called an Emblaser from a firm called Darkly Labs in Australia. Looking at their website was interesting https://darklylabs.com/ but of course there are other companies which are much more local http://www.hpclaser.co.uk/ but their machines are higher powered and consequently more expensive. The Darkly machines that were available when I started looking were about A4 or A3 sizes for about £1000 which was in the ballpark I was looking at. The HPC machine was much more than this although I knew Bob Gledhill was using one for producing lots of things for MERG. On the Darkly site they were also pushing their new machine which was in development, the Emblaser 2. This machine had a bed size of 500x300mm and there was an option to pay in advance for a reduced price. Hmmmmmm.....
Well I took the plunge and ordered an Emblaser 2 and the wait went on and on. The machine was eventually delivered but much later than we anticipated but during that time we had given up using the Fablab because knowing we were going to get our own machine soon we went into design mode and looking at what we could do with it. After my final Fablab visit I had decided that MDF was not the material to use, interlocking corners were not up to the standard we were looking for even though we had a tight fit and we weren't prepared to file 45 degree angles on 2mm thick materials to get a mitre joint. The Aylesbury buildings looked excellent and they used thin Rowmark.
More follows..
On the other forum a while back there was a lot of interest in Silhouette cutting machines and the likes of Mike Trice and Jason in Canada produced some interesting stuff so I bought one. My intention was to use it to build the signal box for Slattocks, especially the windows but experience proved that this idea was flawed. The material i chose was of course 10thou HIPS plastic but it was just too thin and it required so many passes to cut through. If I had tried card it might have worked much better but back then I didn't think of using that medium as I discovered another problem with the machine that i couldn't live with and that was the fact it didn't make square corners.
This picture of the Slattocks signal box was taken prior to completion and you may just be able to see the problem on the signal box door where the glazing bars are not at the same level. This door I used but I actually etched all the rest of the windows as this would have looked ridiculous if the corners were like that.
From there I go interested in what could be achieved with 3-D printers. Bob Gledhill from MERG had a stand at a Scalefour North and after that I asked him if he would come to the Manchester club and do a talk on 3-D printing. He agreed and we saw some interesting examples of what could be achieved using a 3-D printer. I duly purchased a Colido Print-Rite £200 printer knowing it wasn't a high quality producer but thought we might be able to get something decent out of it for buildings. I tried doing some windows but I was disappointed with the finish - that's not to say better results could be achieved but I wasn't prepared to spend a lot of time getting the quality up as I was still thinking I may not get there in the end.
Bob told us about Fablabs and I learned there was one in Manchester. Fablabs are places that are run by the Institute of Manufacturing that have lots of different machines which can be used for free by the public at the weekend. All you need to do is attend the induction course which covers the health and safety aspects of all the machines, which again is free and takes about 30 minutes. Once you have done that you are eligible to run any of the machines and there are lots of different sorts of them. After visiting for the first time I came back gobsmacked and realised that the laser cutting machine they had opened up a lot of doors for us.
I duly did the course and started to learn how to use the Fablab laser cutter. They will supply MDF and ply on site for very reasonable prices but only down to 3mm thick so I bought some of my own thinner MDF and plywood. I drew up cutting plans for making the terraced houses that we need for Slattocks initially using a shell of 2mm MDF with a thin ply overlay for the brickwork. This was taking a long time to cut and ate into the 1 hour slots that the Fablab usually allow. There are booking facilities and it was only by 2 of us going and booking 2 slots together that we could get it done.
We progressed onto the next logical step which was thinking about making interleaved corners with the bricks already engraved onto the MDF but after the session we came away with sloppy joints. I spent a while tinkering with the drawings to see if we could perfect this and eventually managed to find out what the correct settings were for this machine to get this right using the materials we had.
At about the same time I came across Giles Favell's work on a narrow gauge forum (I know, don't mention it) and he has been making some stunning stuff which looked like what I wanted to do. http://bygiles.com/ I know he is working in 7mm but there is some interesting stuff there in 4mm too. He is using Trotec which is a plastic, laser cutters don't like HIPS plastic which is what Plasticard is made from, they give off dangerous fumes. Now Giles was using a machine called an Emblaser from a firm called Darkly Labs in Australia. Looking at their website was interesting https://darklylabs.com/ but of course there are other companies which are much more local http://www.hpclaser.co.uk/ but their machines are higher powered and consequently more expensive. The Darkly machines that were available when I started looking were about A4 or A3 sizes for about £1000 which was in the ballpark I was looking at. The HPC machine was much more than this although I knew Bob Gledhill was using one for producing lots of things for MERG. On the Darkly site they were also pushing their new machine which was in development, the Emblaser 2. This machine had a bed size of 500x300mm and there was an option to pay in advance for a reduced price. Hmmmmmm.....
Well I took the plunge and ordered an Emblaser 2 and the wait went on and on. The machine was eventually delivered but much later than we anticipated but during that time we had given up using the Fablab because knowing we were going to get our own machine soon we went into design mode and looking at what we could do with it. After my final Fablab visit I had decided that MDF was not the material to use, interlocking corners were not up to the standard we were looking for even though we had a tight fit and we weren't prepared to file 45 degree angles on 2mm thick materials to get a mitre joint. The Aylesbury buildings looked excellent and they used thin Rowmark.
More follows..