Manufacturing Capabilities
Happy Holidays everyone, hope you all are having a relaxing time with friends and family. Before we are neck deep in the build season, we thought we should talk a bit about our manufacturing capabilities and what tools we have at our disposal. Some of the tools we talk about below we have had for a number of years, and there are lessons that we learned along the way. We hope that at least one team can find something that might help them improve their manufacturing during the season.
CNC Routers (2 OMIO X8’s)
Carts
For our CNC Routers, we have them on enclosed carts. These carts have a monitor, a computer, the anti-freeze as coolant that we run in a PC water cooling loop for the spindle, some tools/end mills for the router, and the CNC Router itself.
Setup
We set up our Routers with a ¾ plywood spoil board, that is just smaller than the travels of the machine, and we mount it with 6 counterbored ¼-20s to maximize our work envelope. To guarantee the spoil boards are parallel to the spindle, we face just a little bit off the top with a 1” facing bit.
Lessons Learned
One of the largest lessons that has become apparent to us is that it is more important to just get the machine running. We could keep screwing with the CAM and optimize maybe 20 minutes off the cycle time, but for the purpose of the 1-off parts we do, it makes more sense to just get the machine running. If you really want to optimize, set up templates.
Nesting in Fusion has been a big addition to our workflow, saving material and maximizing time spent with machines running. With nesting, we are able to CAM out every part of our robot for a certain material so we don’t have to spend time re-mounting stock for each part.
Fixturing
Most of the time, we just hold parts down with screws into the spoil board. This last season, we began to use the superglue and tape method for thin parts. This was very effective if the part didn’t have many holes in it. To hold our tubes, we made a fixture plate out of UHMW that clamped the tubes to a rail using mitee bite clamps. This worked very well before we got the mill.
Materials
The materials we cut on the CNC Routers are MDF, HDPE, UHMW, polycarbonate, wood, as well as plate and sheet aluminum.
What We Use It For
We use it for cutting all of our plate stock for our robot and cutting holes in our drive rails. This was where we made all of our aluminum parts that couldn’t be turned before we got the mill.
CNC Mill
It is a Bridgeport Torq Cut 22 CNC mill donated by a local FRC team, 1987 the Broncobots from Lee’s Summit North High School. We will go more in-depth on our experiences so far with the mill in an upcoming post about our off-season training mechanism.
Manual Lathe
What We Use It For
We use it for making our hex shafts; for example, last year our intake hex shafts were made on the lathe.
Would We Suggest It?
We have the Grizzly G0602. It is a nice small lathe that seems to be able to do everything we ask of it. For smaller teams that are short on space, this seems to be a good lathe.
General Tools
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Metal Vertical Bandsaw (Grizzly G0806)
Used for cutting out metal plates and cutting stock down to size. A solid, heavy machine with variable speed for different materials.
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Wood Vertical Bandsaw (Craftsman Tilt Head Saw)
Primarily used for cutting wood around the shop and cutting stock for prototypes. Mostly not used for robot parts but useful early in the season.
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Metal Horizontal Bandsaw (Grizzly G0561)
A good-sized saw with coolant for chip clearing. However, the blade guides don’t go low enough for much of the stock we use.
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Box and Pan Brake (Grizzly T32719)
Used for bending parts, such as polycarbonate sponsor plates.
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Drill Press
While we don’t use this much for robot parts due to having CNCs, it is occasionally used for general modifications.
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Grinders
Used to remove burrs from parts machined with tabs or sharpen lathe tools when machining HDPE or UHMW.
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Sanders
For smoothing wood parts or light deburring and post-processing parts from the router.
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Router Table
Handy for removing tabs on CNC router parts or adding chamfers to plastic parts.
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Table Saw
Used to cut down plate stock for the CNC router or sometimes to cut sheet aluminum up to ¼” thick.
3D Printers
Bambu Labs
We use Bambu Labs printers for printing all of our robot parts with strong infill. The Bambu printers are reliable for strength and aesthetics. We primarily use PLA/PLA+ with various infill patterns and wall settings depending on the application. Additionally, we use an AMS to add multi-color logos for extra flair.
Printers We Use During the Season
- Bambu X1 Carbon w/ AMS
- Bambu A1 w/ AMS Lite
- Various Bambu A1 Minis
Final Thoughts
Many of these tools might seem like a luxury, and many teams can make robots with far less than what we have access to presently. Not too many years ago, we were in a single classroom with little more than hand tools. The key to the build season is to understand your manufacturing limits and to design a robot within them. We are so fortunate to have the great machining resources we have, and the students willing to learn the processes to make quality parts.
Written by:
@EEMAN
@zkerfoot
Hershey2357
CT-7567
Kris Cobb
(Would link their profiles but chief delphi doesn’t let us have more than 2)
