DigiFab Studio: CNC Milling
For this weeks assignment I designed a pattern for CNC Milling and milled it on the Bantam PCB Milling Machine. I ran into some problems during the process that took me a long time to figure out how to solve. First, when I opened the logo design in the BantanTools software only half of my logo was visible on the material. Even though my file was exported to a SVG file from adobe illustrator, it would show up like this in BantamTools:
My logo was left centered and hald of my my logo was cut off. I tried changing the background to transparent in illustrator and also adding a background, but it would still show up in BantamTools like in the image above. After many hours trying to figure out how to change the position of my logo on the spoilboard, I gave up on trying to figure out how to make my entire logo visible. So then I decided to try a different pattern. And this is the pattern that I went for:
When opening the SVG file in BantamTools the full design was visible on the spoilboard, ready to mill it on the Bantam PCB Milling machine.
However, little did I know was that I was going to run into some more issues. As I connected my computer to the Bantam PCB Milling machine and tried to mill my design, the needle tool would not go far enough down. I tried adjusting the settings but the needle would still not go far enough down for my design to be milled, as you can see in the image below:
After a couple hours of trying to further adjust the settings, I tried removing the tool with another tool because it looked like the one that was attached was a dull. When changing the tool it finally worked and I was able to mill my design.
And this is how my final product turned out:
My final physical object produced is a puzzle that makes a heart shape when the pieces are put together.
Overall I thought this project was challenging because of all of the issues I ran into. I got very frustrated during the process when I could not figure out how to make the entire logo visible in the BantamTools software. However, I am happy that after a couple hours I was able to figure out how to Mill another design on the Bantam PCB Milling machine.
