Thursday, February 10, 2022

The Jigsaw puzzle - Part 2

 Tonight's puzzle was brought to you by the letters A, C and X, and the numbers 3 and 4...

I got on the CNC tonight to cut the sidewall cores.  I must be learning something along the way, I didn't make a total hash of it, which is good.  
I don't have a good picture of it, but the CNC manager built an experimental vacuum hold down out of a couple of sheets of 1.5¨ pink foam, hollowed, perforated and glued up.  That and a shop vac makes a perfectly adequate full table clamp. It made aligning the sheet a little tricky, and I did let it slip over a little bit on the last panel - it still worked, but it was a little tight to the edge.  Aside from that, it worked great.

The other little gotcha from this episode is that I learned that the version of FreeCAD I'm using has a bug in the pocket routine.  I was still able to cut the rabbets for shelving and dividers by using a profile command, setting the depth by hand, and making a couple of passes to clear the middle of the groove.  If I'd thought a little longer, I could have offset the cutter by a little more and it would've saved me the clearing pass.

At the end of the day, I wound up with two sidewall cores that will spline together, and they match up with the outer wall.  I left the rear section solid since I haven't finalized the galley build (and may not before I start using it.  As you can see from the rabbets, there is a headboard and two shelves in the cabin, and a 'dead space' that will be the heater on one side, and electrical bay on the other. 




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