on to the next project as I am again waiting parts. I know some people are curious how it all works so I thought I would show it a little further. It starts as 2 dimensional drawing that I make on v-carve software. I started with the circles as they will fit around the volt meter and then drew it out from there using the tools shown on the left.
This is going to house a dual battery volt meter in the hole on the bottom, and then there are the two words that will light up when activated again with a small strip of EL lighting. "Smoke mode" is when the line lock is on and the "Power on" Just tells me when the dual battery solenoid is on and both batteries are active rather then just one. The words are backwards because its the back of the piece we are looking at. I paint the back of the acrylic and then use an engraving tip to put the words and the boxes around them so you will be looking at them from the other side when its done. The piece above it is where the EL strips and the volt meter will mount. Both of those pieces will be cut out of .1" thick acrylic and then there will be a trim ring that goes around both(not shown) that will be cut out of .22" thick acrylic. The little "Ttocs rocks" part will hold the light/meter mount in place. This will be mounted where the defrost button and the headlight switch use to be in the gauge bezel.
after you get the 2 dimensional image you like then its time to transfer those lines over to tool instructions that are shown on the right. you highlight a line/vector on the image that you want to cut and then select the toolpath operation you want to perform on that line to the top right. From there you pick which operation(pocket, drill, engrave, follow, ect), the bit you want to use, how far down to cut on the Z axis(up/down), if you want tabs on the piece and a few other options till the tool path is saved in the files shown on the bottom right. There are 7 toolpath programs listed on the bottom and they are shown on the image now with the arrows. From here I save the tool paths I want to use and then save those into a cut file that the handibot can then read and then start cutting. There will actually be 3 different cut files saved because I am using 2 different bits on two different thicknesses of material. Prior to the actual cutting you need to let the tool know how long the bit is by zeroing out the Z-axis. This takes a few minutes and is done through a system where it senses the end of the bit by touching the chassis ground. This way it knows exactly where the cutting end is. After that you just need to make sure the tool is clamped down so it will not move and then its off to work. Now its at this point that you need to be careful. While the cnc is super smart and can cut with in .00001 of a inch, it does not know or care if its cutting through the acrylic or your hand. Because of this my machine has a series of buttons to push to finally activate it to be sure that anyone around it is out of the way, not sure how others do it.
Any requests?