after about a half an hour, and about a quarter of an inch of a cut, we really needed to use the bandsaw for other things.
so me and one of my fellow teammates broke “the beast” out of its hiding place, and spent a good 10 minutes oiling it and making it run good…
this is “the beast”:
Estimated time for freshman to cut block: 5 hours.
Actual time for the beast to cut the block: 1 hour and 10 minutes.
Oil used: about a quart. Almost every seal on the machine leaks constantly…there was a nice puddle on the cart that it sits on when it was done.
He didnt actually sit there for 5 hours and cut the whole thing…
we only needed one slice cut off.
I thought I said that after a half an hour, we booted him off and fed the chunk to the beast…
It was kinda funny watching him attempt to cut it though :yikes:
we had to machine some pillow blocks.
The slice took alot less time to cut into squares once it was thin enough.
we also made spacers, and some other parts that have a purpose, but I am not sure what for yet…
we usually have smaller blocks of aluminum stock around the shop, but we used most of them last year, and never got around to buying more.
this was the only piece of raw stock we had left lol
my team does ALOT of custom machining.
every moving part on our robot this year is held on with a custom milled block or bracket.
Keeping the freshman busy is to have them cut drive shaft that has the special coating and the hard stuff, not soft. She got about 1/8 into it before I had to take over and I got another 1/8 into before I had to leave. We only have a hacksaw. And then they decided not to use it altogether so that was a waste of an evening for me but it was fun.
These machines are a GODSEND!
They will cut basically ANYTHING.
We cut a frozen loaf of bread with ours once for a little fun video our website guy was making.
I had to cut the hardened steel shaft of a cim last year with a dremel…I think I broke like 7 disks…
but it was necessary to the design of the cool helical gearbox I designed for our conveyor system…
where would you get a monster saw like that? my team only has access to miter saws and band saws on a regularly and even with proper blades its not pretty cutting thick metal
How we keep our Freshmen busy is by having them be the “runners” for the little things anyone else would need. Some of our freshies are actually helpful and beneficial (one grew up around machinery and the such, so he’s been a great deal of help) but the rest we assigned to upperclassmen and mentors so that they could learn the trade… especially since our team is pretty much made up of only Juniors and Freshmen… well, and one Senior. So pretty much, no Seniors on the management team for students. So it’s gonna be just those guys, so they gotta learn the roads now while they still can. Otherwise we’re going down the drain for next year, especially when most of my class (the Juniors) want to have jobs for next year. ">.>
My team goes as follows this year:
4 seniors (including me)
2 juniors
somewhere around 3 sophomores
and about 15 freshmen…
The majority of knowledge from the team comes from 2 seniors and 1 junior…
so…those freshmen better get their act together and start learning the ropes! lol…
we try and include them in on things, but we are getting down to the wire, and there are just so many of them that it gets too overwhelming with them all standing around asking for things to do…
I went in with 3 other people yesterday at 1, and tsayed till 9:30…
we hauled butt and did about a weeks worth of work in one night :ahh:
