New Bot, New Projects
Hi,
I'm senior photographer and lead fabricator at a photo studio dedicated to e-commerce photography.
When I first arrived, in an effort to make myself indispensable, I started making stuff to speed repetitious things through the studio. I'm self taught (aka hackineer). Initially I started making things by hand and managed to keep my fingertips cutting circles out of PC on a home made router table. It helped so much, they started giving me money to buy tools.
I knew a SB would be a big sell given I had no experience with a CNC table, so I stared with the X-Carve. It proved valuable, but it was obvious we were going to destroy it in short order. I was given capital money to buy a machine. Little did I know how integral the SB would become or how large the projects would grow in size.
Buddy at ShopBot sold us a 5x8 PRSAlpha, and we've been working it hard ever since. Wonderful machine.
Aside from the usual cuts of jigs, adapters and fixtures, here are a couple that kind of show off the versatility of the table.
1- We shoot on melamine tables (6' and up to 9' diameter currently), and they pretty much get destroyed within weeks. They are not cheap. So I had the idea of using a performance resin, and pouring a solid top that could be sanded with a motorized drywall sander to yield a new surface in minutes. I couldn't have poured it without the ShopBot, as it allowed us to fabricate a slotted leveling table that only used 4 points (and center support) for leveling. At that size, it has to be dead on. Here's the table being readied for the 6' pour. It has to be able to support 160 pounds of resin for the 6 foot table and almost 400 pounds for the 9' table. We have yet to pour the 9' as other projects jumped in line.
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1 - I do a lot of RTV silicone molding and urethane resin casting, and the SB has taken us from a very tedious hand lay-up and gradually moved us to what I believe are master fixtures that will be used long after I'm gone. We have finally settled on this. We use acetal copolymer for the surfaces (the part as well as the parting surface). However, to avoid having to buy full depth acetal, we back it up with MDF and pocket that MDF (oversized) under it with resin on the occasion we need to go below 1/2" (see the pockets in the flat one). The black dots are pocketed cabinet screws - didn't want to try to adhere acetal to MDF with adhesive. Then, rather than deal with clink boards, clay, clamps and all that stuff, we channeled out the walls for an HDPE insert. So now when a mold wears out, we pop the walls in, tape the seam, and pour. Done and done.
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Anyway, this is just the tip of the iceberg for such a versatile machine. Even better, I'm helping get others interested and exposing them to things they never knew existed as was done for me by a friend who has a metal shop. Pretty exciting times.
Marc
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