OT Cool machining project.

[Nathan the Machinist]

I haven't done a thread in a while. This one isn't knife related, but I thought it was pretty cool and figured some folks might like it. That and I just want to show it off, I think it turned out really neat.

I live in Mooresville NC, probably the epicenter of racing in the US. This was a job for an odd camera mount to go on a race car. The car is an Indy style open wheel open cockpit type thing. The driver wanted the camera to be mounted up high and pointed down over his helmet so he could get a view of the cockpit, gauges, track and other cars. This put it up high into the wind. So it had to be stout, yet light weight and aerodynamic. We settled on a hollow airfoil design.




There is a hole and some other features at a weird angle so the first thing I did was cut a datum surface at that angle that I could fixture from. I'm using some used soft jaws here because I'll be cutting a fixture out of it later. The black line is a sharpie line - a reality check before starting.

Using that surface to set my workpiece at an angle, I indicate off the edge and cut those features.

Then I set it upright

some more in process picts:

 

[Nathan the Machinist]

I then cut the soft jaws of the vice to hold the mount upside down. One of my challenges here was to make the mount conform to the geometry of the car, which was highly curved. I took measurements and determined the area was a constant radius side-to-side and parabolic like an airfoil in the direction of airflow. I printed out some templates of my best guess at these curves and a few iterations later I had templates that fit the car. I then combined these curves into 3D geometry I could machine onto a plastic prototype to test my fitup. A few tweaks to the prototype later I had good geometry. The area where the part is mounted had a few layers of paint but the mount crosses over the painted area and onto an area of unpainted carbon fiber, and surprisingly the thickness of the paint had to be taken into consideration to achieve a good fit. The paint was probably .010"!

The mount was hollowed out until there was only a thin wall remaining. All the features cut from three directions intersect correctly and the trap door (not shown) works.

Finished shot

And after they painted it to match the car.

And on the car

This is the first time I've shown non-knife work here. I hope I'm not out of bounds showing it off, but I thought this was a pretty cool project, and who doesn't like race cars...

 

[Burton Harruff]

Very cool. I work for an American LeMans race team and I will have to show them this tomorrow.

 

[chris609]

Wow thats cool! I worked at a machine shop for about a year when I wanted to get out of the resturant biz. I miss working with those CNC machines. It was one of my favorite jobs. Is that a haas mini mill?

 

[Nathan the Machinist]

Is that a haas mini mill?

Yeah it is. It is a good little mill. Smooth and accurate.

 

[bhyde]

Very nice Nathan! Sure wish the beauty of raw machined parts appealed to people..I hate covering up work with paint!

I wish I could post some of the stuff I work on...But that would get me canned pretty quick. Seems anymore that I rarely see 2d parts..Mostly stuff like this but out of modeling materials.

BTW...I personally love to see what people work on no matter what it is...Machined stuff is my favorite...But I am not all that picky!

 

[Nathan the Machinist]

I though it was a bummer to paint it too. But then again, I also thought it was a bummer to have a solid carbon fiber race car and paint that. I think the underling materials are too cool to cover up, but what do I know. There are some seatbelt hookup points on the inside of it we did in titanium that aren't painted because they're not very visible...

I wish you could post some of the cool stuff you work on without getting canned, but I understand that is the way most places are. NDAs...

 

[David Wesner]

Wow ! Very nice work Nathan :thumbup:

This kind of post really turns my crank !!

I can't blame you for wanting to show it off. IMO, it's about as cool as cool can get

NC and the Racing Industry is lucky to have such a skilled Machinist they can call on when need be

 

[Phil Dwyer]

So how did you HT that sucker?

 

[SteelSlaver]

Nathan, thanks it is interesting and I did pick something up. I was wondering how to hold odd shapes. Just make a set of aluminum jaws for the vise and machine them to hold whatever. I agree with you on the paint, it just covers up the really good work and neat stuff. Jim

 

[mete]

Nice work ! I do radio work for Rally New York .More and more they're putting cameras in the cars but they are inside.It's especially useful in that you can see the entire course rather than one spot as you see as a spectator.
It makes it much easier that the lense is separate from the camera !

 

[R. Mark Lee]

Way cool! I haven't been in the machine shop for years, but I always liked those one of a kind projects where you get to use a lot of the stuff you learned over the years instead of just straight turning or boring. I agree with the no paint comment. Besides, you can't see the hamon when you paint it.

 

[arrowhead]

Yes, it is pretty cool. Beautiful work. Too bad they had to cover it with paint, especially that yucky color.

I would like to see more projects like this.

 

[Nathan the Machinist]

Oh good lord Dave, with all the race shops around here (including the Haas factory team) there are so many machinists around here that a jack like me doesn't even register...

Nathan, thanks it is interesting and I did pick something up. I was wondering how to hold odd shapes. Just make a set of aluminum jaws for the vise and machine them to hold whatever. I agree with you on the paint, it just covers up the really good work and neat stuff. Jim

Here, this is kind of on topic (and more cool machining porn). I'm helping Tai make some of his heavy long nose forging hammers. This was the prototype:

But for "production" I'm turning the profile then milling it. Talk about a tough shape to hold in a vice. So I made these soft jaws to hold it for the milling. "Lord willing and the creek don't rise" I'll get some milled out this weekend. These will be heavy cuts in 4150 (on a much larger mill than the little Haas) so these are made of steel rather than aluminum, though I think aluminum would work if I were just making a couple.

I guess I'm about out of cool stuff for now...

 

[NickWheeler]

Wow, totally freak'n awesome!

I'll be like the 18th to reiterate it's too bad they painted it.... but it would probably look funny in place in that last pic without the paint

I love shots like these. The machine shop instructor at school told me that often times the most difficult part of his job in the tool and die trade was fixturing the work.

And to think I was feeling all cool for being able to cut threads and stuff LMAO

 

[Nathan the Machinist]

The machine shop instructor at school told me that often times the most difficult part of his job in the tool and die trade was fixturing the work.

And to think I was feeling all cool for being able to cut threads and stuff LMAO

Threads are good. :thumbup:


Yeah, 30 minutes setup for a 30 second cut is really not that unusual in one off stuff.

The level of complexity making the hammer fixture is probably ten times more complex than the cuts on the hammer itself. But you got to hold it somehow...

 

[john0270]

I have always been more amazed at how machinists go about doing intricate work like this than the actual work itself, allot of thought goes into setup.

 

[P.Brewster]

I too have wondered how you 3-D Wizards hold on to your workpieces.

thanks

 

[Nathan the Machinist]

Some more cool machine work, the Tai hammer:

http://i566.photobucket.com/albums/...9_tai_goo_hammer/first_finnished_hammer_2.jpg

http://i566.photobucket.com/albums/ss107/Nathan_the_Machinist/110809_tai_goo_hammer/hammer_side2.jpg


This is this weekend's results from that fixture from last week. Linked instead of posted (I'm sincerely trying not spam BF). I'm proud of the machine work. There is a lot of steel removed, so I'm equally proud that I figured out ways to do it without eating up an unreasonable amount of tooling.

 

[unky_gumbi]

Just out of curiosity what would a project like that cost the customer? I would love a mount for my helmet that offered a little more protection for the camera than my ghetto mounts I have made. Just wondering because I think it just may be cheaper to buy an actual helmet mounted camera then using my handycam.