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Thread: Shopbot Desktop Remediation

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Apr 2018
    Posts
    5

    Default Shopbot Desktop Remediation

    A couple of months ago I joined Vancouver MakerLabs. After taking their intro CNC course, I have spent a fair number of hours learning Fusion 360 and working with their little Shopbot Desktop. The Shopbot had fallen into a bit of disrepair. The existing spoil board was a minefield of deep grooves and screw holes where people had respectively cut too deep or secured their work-piece with all manner of screw fastener. I set about creating a new board, replete with a 2" x 2" grid of dog holes backed with 1/4" 20 tpi T-nuts. I modelled and created the CNC tool paths for cutting this spoil-board in Fusion 360. The fixtures holding the board down at the edges are temporary - these secured the board while the internal hold-down slots were being milled. (I've gotten into the habit of modelling all fixtures accurately so that Fusion's CAM system can detect collisions.)

    Moving on, what use are dog holes if you can't leverage them ... so I similarly created work-piece hold down cleats and side-pressing cam clamps. (Note, neither of these are my own design. See here and here for the YouTube videos detailing the cleats and cam clamp designs respectively.)

    I also fabricated a new male base plate for the Shopbot's broken dust shoe holder. I started with a flatbed scan of the matching female half of the dust shoe assembly. I then brought this into Fusion 360 with the Attached Canvas, calibrated against a known dimension and quickly created a highly-accurate sketch. Extrude the part, over to the CAM environment to create an SVG file suitable for laser cutting, and soon after we had a new base plate made from 6mm acrylic. I glued in the magnets and the dust shoe mount was back on the machine.

    Finally I added a unistrut support for the dust extraction hose and MakerLabs' Derek Gaw added a strip of white LEDs to provide illumination for this portable machine. Now that the "meta making" is complete, I'm ready to get back to designing and CNCing something real.

    An image gallery showing the results can be seen at https://gallery.autodesk.com/project...ot-desktop-tlc. (If you'd rather I add the images directly to this thread, just let me know and I'll update the post.)

    I love this little machine ... despite having broken my first bit yesterday. Totally my fault obviously: I was rushing and made a CAM setup error.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Garland Tx
    Posts
    2,334

    Default

    Nice work Darran!

    I’m especially impressed with anyone who can make sense of Fusion 360! I guess I’m getting too old to learn the “new trick”.

    SG

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Sep 2012
    Location
    Blaine Mn
    Posts
    340

    Default

    Great work Darran- I too love Fusion 360 [ BTW Steve- I am 72 and learned it in a month, and it is well worth it]. I can understand the side pressure clamps [which I have never used] working well with the 'dogs' but I would not think you could get enough holddown force with the cleats? I have always used T-tracks and brass thread inserts. Thanks Gene

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Aug 2012
    Location
    Victoriaville, QC, Canada
    Posts
    64

    Default

    Very nice and inspiring work. Thanks for sharing. I love your spoil board design. I too use Fusion and love it though VCarve's simplicity is nice as well.

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