This project has been nickeling and diming me for years on my time but now I figured I should just hammer down and build it because I have the tools to do it...
When I started this concept a few years ago with my brother, I knew I could finish it quickly and it would turn out like the Gravity bike and everyone would get stoked but the more I ran with the concept and split off with my brother the more I realized I was becoming a machinist for stuff but I was still missing the CNC part to really make my parts stand out...
I can machine anything by hand to a point but it often requires special attention on things like finish work because its not a perfect smooth finish but cnc offers you a showcase of the machining effort you have put in to it, its why people love aircraft parts and crazy cnc bicycle and motorcycle parts. Theres something about leaving the raw machine marks all over it and not polishing it to a glass like finish that sometime once anodized looks like plastic...
The more I left it sit on the frame table the more it would bug me looking at it but my customers come first and its not to say that I am short on work, what you see on my blog is about 20% of the projects I can show without getting sued or thrown in jail, so it took the back burner... maybe not even the back burner, maybe almost refrigerator with a cover over it...
The day came where after some sweet wheelin and dealin I scored the CNC Bridgeport Boss 10 and did the retro fit to a brand new drive and PLC ready to take on the most complex jobs, then came the teaming up with Autodesk's new company called HSMworks which links to Solidworks and Inventor for CAM ( see the old blog posts for more details) and with those 2 things the door finally opened on making crazy parts a reality... No paying for machining that I can't afford... I would do it myself and let it run all night on crazy parts.
This is the project my brother and I came up with to build and I have been running with it since it was sketched... Lots still to come but day by day this thing is coming together....
So come along with my machining adventure in the next weeks to see this beast come to life...
Machining aluminum softjaws to hold a expanding mandrel
plus it makes a perfect origin 0,0 right away after cutting
I wouldn't call them softjaws really because it would still hurt if you got them thrown at you, but in the machining world anything made of Aluminum is called SOFT... ha, whatever....
These are the hub blanks Liem made on the Lathe using HSMworks Lathe Cam software
As you can see the one side of the hub was done but the other side needed to be hollowed out, plus I wanted disc rotor mounts and because the Haas Lathe we did the work on didn't have live tooling we were stuck doing it this way.
This is the expanding mandrel in my hand
Perfect fit ready for the hub.
Here we go... clearing it out with a pocketing cutting feature.
I didn't use a big end mill because I didn't want a lot of cutting pressure to cause it to possible spin or move on the mandrel...
Don't call me a pussy
switched over to a long 12mm ball end mill with relief to do this deep cut
Looks great but it was ringing like crazy so I put this wrist band I got from Autodesk University on it to reduce the chatter, perfect!
VIP status...
check that out!!!
With the mounts for the floating rotor!
On to the next parts
Dropouts on this bike are a wild one too, if you scroll up to the 3d model of the bike you will see the crazy machined dropouts so here we go... making chips.
cutting away..
I really like the look of ball endmilling the radius in to things and also the radius on these parts varies so theres no way I could use a normal tool
At the end I did a webbing and the part was held in by a few pieces and then I cut it out with a aviation shear... easy and fast and then I made another side in a mirrored image.
Thinking time... Sometimes its easier to draw and look at a part then using crazy modeling software.
I feel that a lot of newer engineers don't understand how important this is... you don't always need to sit and stare at the computer to make parts, go out in the shop and smell the oil.
Surplus Lockheed 6-4 Titanium
Blocks of it ready to become a king pin steering set up for the cable steering front end.
I really freestyled this part, I hope it works...
Roughing Titanium is a learning experience
If you don't machine it a lot it can be very costly if you mess up...
Called up Tom at
Ox Tool to make sure I had everything right, hes rattled off the numbers on the phone by memory....
.375 depth of cut - 8 ipm at about 900 RPM with a .120 step over with a 4+ flute endmill
He knew it... maybe he has done it before....
Side one getting some ball endmilling
and some clean up in the bearing pockets, you will see in the next weeks how this part works.
it worked out pretty good, have to debur it and do some finish work on it but I think it will work to get the bike on the ground as a roller, just think this could have been some crazy part at Lockheed... but they were going to scrap it so I put some life back in it by making a mini F22 Raptor style steering link part... Kind of like Lockheed Skunkworks around here...
I got so excited about aerospace stuff I had to make a cart....
Built this beast in a few hours out of the junk laying in the off cut pile next to the saw
MLS Aerospace division just got a fresh new cart, off to powdercoating.
Good People