Quote:
Originally Posted by koreamaniac101
Hi, I'm the founder of my robotics team that plans to start its rookie year in 2016. We just got access to our local universities machine shop with:
- Lathe
- CNC Mill
- Vertical/Horizontal Bandsaw
- Cold Saw
- Surface grinder
- Drill Press
My new mentors are wondering why would need all the machine shop equipment for. Could any give specific examples of what you would use each of these equipment for? If you could link pictures of specific parts made from a Mill or Lathe, that would be great too. |
Hi-
All those tools are very relevant during a FRC build season.
Specific examples;
Turning spacers for drive train use on a lathes seems to be the most common part we turn. We'll also use the tail stock to drill and/or broach perfectly concentric holes; obviously a critical feature for rotating components. Yeah, there are other ways to do this, but the lathe is almost always the best tool for it.
We (team 95) will often use a CNC plasma cutter to 'blank' brackets and side plates, and a bridgeport style CNC mill to cut tighter tolerence features like bearing pockets, hole patterns etc.
the mill is also useful for making brackets in thicker materials; these parts (on the vice) were done on a manual mill, but could have just as easily been done on the CNC. They required a lot of material removal and a couple of loose tolerance fits. hogging that material out with hand drills, hack saws or making the parts out of several pieces would have been a huge pain.
CNC mills are great for repetitive parts. These bars were done on a CNC mill. Each feature had some tightish tolerances, and doing them all 'by hand' on a manual mill with DRO just wouldn't be reasonable.
The other tooling, like bandsaws, drill presses and cold/chop saws are so basic in our build process that I don't think we've bothered documenting their use much. They're indispensable.
Take a look at the Robot Showcase sub-forum, in particular dig around for 'build threads', where teams detail the build process for their robots. They often have good photos and discussion of parts being made. All the photos I've used are from the Team 95 Hard at Work threads from the 2014/15 seasons.