Its been a while since I have been able to do any 'proper' machining due to health, refit for our fishing boat, making some pens (my only indulgence...honest), and trying to become a silversmith! My task today however was to fulfil a commission. Yes, my first ever commission, a pair of brackets to be secured to a concrete newel post and hold a pair of stainless steel glass clamps.

Yesterday, whilst laid up I decided to use my 3D package to draw up a design to match the design brief. Normally I would make a part as I went along and have found it difficult to design away from the workshop. So if I could make the drawing then this would be a real first and a continuation of my learning experience.

I did take a while trying to find a 3D package and had several false starts. I had played with a useful package but when trying to get it to produce drawings from the model it was very difficult. That's when I found Alibre and downloaded their free package. At the time the retail price of the full version was around £800 - £1000 (from memory) and the only limitation of the free version was the number of parts you could put into an assembly.

I have found Alibre to be really good for me as one advantage for me was little or no previous CAD experience so I didn't have to 'un-learn'(horrible word - sorry) anything. The big advantage with Alibre is the very simple transfer of your work to drawings, its really simple.

Armed with my drawing I found some stock aluminium and after getting two suitable 'lumps' using the Clarke bandsaw it was over to the milling machine to fly cut two faces for marking out. One recent addition to the workshop marking out tools was a digital angle setting tool (£19.99 from Axminster tools). I can highly recommend the tool and can see it being of great use in the future.

Marking out tools and the drawings in the background

Baileigh Industrial Digital Angle Mitre Finder with Ruler    £38.50

STAINLESS STEEL EASY ANGLE FINDER RULER PROTRACTOR 610MM MAXIMUM OPENED LENGTH    £8.49

Once the two faces were completed they were covered with layout fluid (does anyone know of a supplier in the UK for red marking out fluid? If so please email me) I got out my granite surface plate and digital height gauge and marked out the design as per the drawing produced by 3D CAD. To enable me to use the new digital angle ruler I needed to raise the block of aluminium so decided to use my set of slip gauges bought on ebay. Its a very nice old set of gauges with Bakelite inserts and as I was not firing on all cylinders made sure I opened the box the right way up using the front securing hook as my guide and yes, I got it wrong! The result was a lot of small pieces of steel all over the floor! Tut tut said I......

Ooopppsss!

After gathering up the slips I put them to one side whilst I finished the marking out. Once this was completed I knew how much I needed to remove by bandsaw. This was the first time I needed to use the Carke bandsaw for any angled cuts. My previous smaller Warco  bandsaw cut angles by swinging the whole bandsaw on a pivot however the Clarke moved the vice and not the bandsaw.

This is when I discovered a new (to me) method of work holding with the bandsaw which would not have been available on the Warco. By removing the small movable vice jaw I could attach a clamp fixing bolt in its place and by judicious use of the spanner, held the aluminium in place. This allowed me to cut something that would never have been possible with the old bandsaw and opens up all sorts of ideas for future cuts!

The new (to me) method of holding work in the Clarke bandsaw

Having gotten the two pieces of aluminium roughly to shape I decided to call it a day and hopefully tomorrow if I am up to it I can make real progress in completing the brackets. So it was indoors to sort out the slip up with the slip gauges!

Trying to sort out the mess of dropped slips!

Optical Parallels Mitutoyo Micrometer Lathe Milling Myford Precision    £45.99

CEJ 132mm Slip Gauge    £1.50

CAD progress update 3^rd March 2009

I believe I may have settled on a strategy at last for my use of CAD. It was nearly CAD/CAM because a member of HMEM forum was selling a CNC milling machine and lathe recently released by a school. I made an offer on the milling machine which matched the seller’s valuation but he wanted to sell both and not split them. I wasn’t too unhappy and would have only bought the mill because of its size and value for money (looked like it had never been used!)

Anyway back to CAD. Again on the HMEM forum one member related his experiences with Alibre Design CAD software which, whilst the full program costs a considerable amount (not really cost effective for the hobbyist), do offer a limited version which is free. Yes free! This software operates in 3D and it allows very simple transfer of work to drawings. Something I was looking for from BobCad.

I had tried several months ago to download Alibre without success, so whilst it came recommended, I was not looking forward to trying to install it again. However when downloading this time it went through fine and works on my laptop running on Vista basic (which causes problems on most CAD/CAM packages as far as I can see). The only issue I found was that the last failed attempt to download must have registered with Alibre because the first download includes running the full version for a limited period of time before it then runs the free version (and some of the features disabled).

All of this came about at a time when I was thinking of upgrading from TurboCad Deluxe to a more comprehensive premium version but 2 or 3 versions old. So I thought I would try Alibre since it has installed. I must say that after the first few sessions, when it seems impossible to even draw a straight line with any new program, I did start to get to grips with it.

Alibre does have a very useful help system and even after the initial frustrations of having used BobCad in full 3D mode, going back to 2D TurboCad and now back again to 3D, I prefer working in 3D. I have been told that if you have been brought up using CAD from the early days, you do need to change your thinking when using 3D. Fortunately my lack of experience and exposure to CAD is in fact something of an advantage! Well there had to be one somewhere.

This morning I managed to make a couple of gear studs for the Myford ML7 I have just refurbished. If you want to see more then visit my Myford specific site. I managed to turn a couple of gear studs which have replaced the old style that came with the lathe. With the newly made studs I do not have to dismantle as much when gear changing.

My next project will be to resume the camshaft for the Seal engine and make inline boring bar and a tool setting device for the boring bar so watch thiis space. I will be producing drawings for both the inline boring bar and the tool adjustment fixture as part of my learning to use 3D cad software.

I feel I should update you all as to where I am with my CAD/CAM experience and designing my own engine. Not very far I have to say.

I bought at for me, great expense, BobCad  CAD software.  They seemed far more focused on selling than supporting as far as I was concerned and whilst I did like there 3D side it was transferring the models to 2D drawing sheets that I couldn’t sort out. Without answering my many request and being fed up with the sales people who were told my views on support (they promised to pass on my remarks and help request) I could get no where. As someone once said if you keep banging your head against a wall you eventually find out that it hurts!

In the end I took the salesman’s advice when purchasing BobCad “you could always sell it on eBay as its all yours” (yes he did!) I did just that and listed it on eBay. I did not recover all my costs, but the biggest part, so looked for a cheap 2D drawing package. My confidence in software salesman taking a large knock I decided I would not go for such an expensive solution since I have cooled on the idea of CNC. I saw a version of TurboCad 14 deluxe on eBay for under £30 so sent off for it straight away.

When it arrived with a full training support CD system I thought it was a bargain. It would certainly do all the 2D stuff I wanted but it also does 3D. Whilst it is not as good as BobCad for 3D modeling it was only around a tenth of the price! So I then started to learn a whole new program. When it came to doing some of the tasks I wanted after becoming slightly more proficient, I discovered the natural limitations of the deluxe version.

When searching out forums, the internet in general it seemed that upgrading it to a premium version was the way to go(where have I heard that before!) however I wasn’t going to fork out several hundred pounds again but I found an American supplier of TurboCad version 12 premium for about a $100 or so and that’s what I have now. I shall sell the version 14 deluxe soon so if anyone’s interested then email me.

I am now going to put all my efforts into learning how to use TurboCad 12 premium and have already produced some plans for small items in the workshop. At present I am working on a tool height setting fixture for setting the diameter of an in line boring tool (need it for the Seal build) based loosely on another’s design. A plan of the ball turning tool I made for the chess set featured in Model Engineer magazine (issues 4345, 4346 and 4347) to accompany a build article that may be published some time in the future.

So you see the engine design is going to be later in the year before real progress is made. Indeed it may be a case of building parts, that will be drawn up later, and others that may be drawn first. Something I may not be alone in doing……Experience and a better understanding of CAD may lead me away from this approach……..time will as ever, tell!

I will post more on this design later but its shuch a pretty picture I though I would share it now!

I am now going to try and get line drawings from the 3D and see if I can actually build one from the drawing board as it were. Funny how it doesn't appear in my plans for next year! So can I do it before the 1st January 2009? Don't be daft!

My first attempt at designing an engine

Current progress with engine design

 copyright 2008 M W Freeman

(just in case its a world beater!) If it works I will put the plans into a PDF for anyone to build (for personal use only). I would ssuggest you wait and see if it works first!

I bought some software recently that was unplanned for (at the moment) from BobCad. I had a couple of hiccups initially and until the training video's arrived I did struggle. I have been 'playing' with it recently without trying to design something from scratch. This approach to learning new software has served me well over the years.

Since I don't sleep too well I was thinking about a 2 cylinder steam engine with a central flywheel during the night. As I have been resting most of the day I had a go with the CAD program. This is some of the work I achieved. Its not finished yet by a long way and I will need to convert the 3D to line drawings with dimensions. However this will be some motivation to learn these aspects.

Anyway here are a few images to give some idea of the work done today.