Thanks Cat , 1st it started as a pic from the sales brochure imported into auto-cad , scaled to 1:14 scale , many hrs. of tracing and tuning up the tracing . 2nd ,many hrs. of design of all the components as an assembly .
3rd , break the assembly into parts , duplicate where needed , place parts of same thickness on that certain thickness plate in such a way as to min. waste . keep in mind I'm doing all my designs in 2D
. 4th import part plate file to cam , hrs. of programing ( for me any way ) , simulate to make sure everything is what you want (IMPORTANT) double check , triple check , maybe quad check
. 5th, load file in machine and set up (IMPORTANT) double check , triple check , maybe quad check
6th , push green button and watch crunching action in blink of eye
only if you DID NOT , double check , triple check , maybe quad check
. As you can see this CNC thing has and still is a rough road for me yet
I still like hand cranks , but , with what I can do on the VMC now , this CNC thing is catching on
.