Making Stuff

So in case not everybody knows, I’m a manufacturing engineering major. That means when I go to class I usually learn about the really cool stuff and how to make things. Last semester I was in a plastics class and learned about… well, making things out of plastic! Cups, soda pop bottles, nerf footballs, trash bags… you get the idea. I even made a mouse griping pad for my mom so she could have better control over the movement of the computer mouse.

This semester, I’m doing a lot with metals. I have a machine shop class where I work with the REAL power tools (band saws, end mills, lathes, CNC milling machines etc…) and a metals processes class as well (where I do everything from casting metal to bending and welding.) So far in my machining class, we’ve made a hammer and a puzzle cube. The hammer, I made from “scratch” aka a straight piece of solid aluminum stock and a piece of nylon. For those of you who don’t want the process details, go a head and skip to the pictures, I won’t be offended ;-) for those of you who want to know the details of my hammer making, keep reading.

Unfortunately, I didn’t to a step by step picture journal on how the hammer looked at each stage of the game, so you’ll just have to use your imagination until we get to the finished product.

So when I first get to the machine shop, I had to cut the 12’ aluminum bar stock down to 12” so that it could become the hammer handle. That was done on the band saw. From there, everything else was done on a lathe. At the end where the handle connects to the hammer head, I turned it down to the right connecting size, then added the screw threads. Then I flipped it around to the handle side, turned it down to the right size and knurled it (I put diamond shaped impressions on it for better grip.) Then I shaped the middle part of the hammer. After the handle was done I made the hammer head, much by the same process. Then I screwed the two pieces together, and wa la! The final product!
I also just made a puzzle cube. This is a tricky little thing since it actually can’t be solved. There’s a cube with pegs inside of a box frame. I made the box frame with the cube already inside so it’s impossible to get the cube out!

It was a lot of fun to make, after making sure that it was a true cube by using the end mill, I put it into two CNC (computer numeric control) machines, and told them to run their programs. So mostly I just sat back and watched. This one I did a little better job at getting WIP (work in progress) photos.

So you put it in the fadal, which is a CNC milling machine and it comes out like this. Then I put it in the punch EDM (electrical discharge machine) which cuts the metal using electricity - and it looks something like this.

When that gets done you have the finished product which looks like this.
A cube that is permanently stuck inside of its box frame! Tricky tricky :)

So yeah, that's what I do for class.