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aeronca65t
Great Pumpkin
Offline
One of the details I like on the various, modern versions of the Lotus 7 is the large "7" in the grill. I think this is a Caterham design. In any event, I think it looks pretty fetching.
Especially since I could probably make one (I looked on eBay UK....they're not cheap).
I began by saving a picture of this design by searching Google Images.
Once a jpg. image was saved, I processed the photo through WInTopo which is a free raster to vector software convertor. In other words, it converts a photo image (such as ".jpg") to a CAD format (such as ".dxf").
After cleaning up the CAD drawing and scaling it to an appropriate size, I post-processed the geometry to convert it to CNC code. I used PowerStation (not free....we use it at work).
The CNC code required a little de-bugging but otherwise looked good.
I wondered what to do a test cut on? Then I remembered we had some old cafeteria trays laying around (our cafe got rid of all their trays a few years ago). So I screwed a tray to a piece of plywood and clamped the plywood into the vise on our Tormach CNC mill. I used a 3/16" two flute mill running about 2000 rpm at around 10 ipm. The result wasn't too bad.
So I cut another one out of a piece of scrap aluminum (also screwed to the plywood). It's the last photo below.
I may make a third one (the aluminum one is made out of pretty thin scrap). But anyway, you get the idea in the pictures below.
~WinTopo freeware~
~PowerStation free demo~
~Tormach 1100 CNC mill~
Especially since I could probably make one (I looked on eBay UK....they're not cheap).
I began by saving a picture of this design by searching Google Images.
Once a jpg. image was saved, I processed the photo through WInTopo which is a free raster to vector software convertor. In other words, it converts a photo image (such as ".jpg") to a CAD format (such as ".dxf").
After cleaning up the CAD drawing and scaling it to an appropriate size, I post-processed the geometry to convert it to CNC code. I used PowerStation (not free....we use it at work).
The CNC code required a little de-bugging but otherwise looked good.
I wondered what to do a test cut on? Then I remembered we had some old cafeteria trays laying around (our cafe got rid of all their trays a few years ago). So I screwed a tray to a piece of plywood and clamped the plywood into the vise on our Tormach CNC mill. I used a 3/16" two flute mill running about 2000 rpm at around 10 ipm. The result wasn't too bad.
So I cut another one out of a piece of scrap aluminum (also screwed to the plywood). It's the last photo below.
I may make a third one (the aluminum one is made out of pretty thin scrap). But anyway, you get the idea in the pictures below.
~WinTopo freeware~
~PowerStation free demo~
~Tormach 1100 CNC mill~
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