Speaking from Experience: Complex robot arm

WELCOME!

It is hard to believe that it was almost ten years ago I witnessed a CNC router in action for the very first time. I was fascinated and simply had to have one! Although I had been in the creative end of the three dimensional sign business for most of my life I didn't really know what I would do with one of these machines - but I just knew it could do fantastic stuff.

Along with the CNC router I discovered the wonderful material called Precision Board and the glues, primers and other companion products they offer. Since then we have gone through many tons of the material using it in most signs and projects we tackle. This journal will chronicle our many adventures both past, present and future. I'll talk from the perspective of someone who pushes these products to the creative limit on a daily basis. I'll be adding to the stories two or three times each week. -dan

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Complex robot arm - part four

Slicing reliefs in EnrRoute is actually pretty simple. Open the create slices menu. Then select the relief you wish to slice. It immediately tells you how tall your piece is - in this case it was 2.48"

I selected the create ALL SLICES and changed the thickness to 2" It tells me that we now have two slices. I am happy with the result so I hit the green checkmark.

I immediately see a thicker blue outline and a second lighter outline of the slice. When you use the slice function it creates new reliefs but does not modify the original relief.

O I selected the reliefs, one by one and arranged them side by side. You can see the flat section we sliced off. The bottom arm is the original and is not modified. Since we don't need it anymore I moved it off to the side.

I then created a second copy of the sliced robot arm relief. I selected this duplicated relief and used the mirror tool to flip it. This reverse relief will be led to the back of the first to create a double sided model of the robot arm.

After dropping all of the reliefs to the bottom of the plate the piece is now ready to tool path and then route.