Now that we’ve become familiar with the wooden lathe, it’s time to get to know the metal lathe. Apparently, this is the most dangerous machine in the shop, yikes! The material we are stating with is aluminium. In order to spin material on the lathe, we first have to cut a small piece off the long aluminium rod. The material needs to be secured 1000% in the lathe. Once it’s secured, it’s safe to […]
If you would have shown me this picture and told me a month ago, actually, even a week ago, that I would make that, I would have never believed you. I kind of still can’t believe I was able to make a real bowl on the lathe, but I can say for a fact that I had the best time and also discovered that I have the bug for this machine. This is where the […]
This week we were given an awesome assignment to make foosball players on the lathe. I (stubbornly) wanted to try something a little different and also experiment with lathe, so I decided to try and make an ice cream player. This “turned” out to be a very long trial-and-error session — it took six spins to get this right! My initial attempt was to make a cone shape and half a sphere separately, and to […]
A few weeks ago we were introduced to the lathe. This is a completely new tool to me, and honestly, when Ben first demonstrated how it works, I was a bit terrified. What the lathe does is spin material (wood in our case) at a very high speed, while the crafter removes material away with tools very carefully. Here’s what it looks like. Our assignment was to build a handle based on measurements. Here’s the sketch […]
I’ve been cooking with fresh spices since the day I learned to fry an egg. Nothing beats fresh basil as a topping for pizza, or snipped fresh coriander to dash a warm bowl of curry. The downside though of fresh spices, is if you buy them packaged from the supermarket, it only takes a few days in the fridge for them to start looking like this: So, it has been my dream for a while to build […]
Two weeks ago we were given the challenge to create joints that connect with one another. This might sound like a trivial task (it did to me in the beginning), but actually, it’s not. When creating pieces that are meant to fit together, it’s important to remember that even though in theory it makes sense that these two pieces will just naturally fit into one another, in reality they most likely will not. Every […]
Last Friday, Ben showed us an example of a project done on the CNC machine. He kept referring to as a donut. This is what it looked like: The more I kept hearing the word “donut”, the more I wanted to try to make one using the CNC machine. And here’s how I did just that. Materials and Programs Before materials, I just want to mention that it’s great to work on this kind […]
This week I became familiar with “The OtherMill”, which is essentially a mini CNC machine. The OtherMill is great for small, precision work, and can mill pretty tough materials such as aluminium (which is what I milled this week). The Other Mill Became Ill My first trial on the machine did not go so well. Before I describe what went wrong, I’ll give a quick overview on how the machine works. The OtherMill is a routing […]
“Subtraction” is the name of a class I will be participating in this semester, where we will explore a variety of materials, and tools used for subtracting from those raw materials. Some examples of tools are hand router tools, the laser cutter and the CNC machine. This week, our homework assignment was to create this shape by using the hand router tool. Look complicated? It’s not! Let’s see how it’s done. Here’s a pic of […]