Usinage du système solaire

About a year and half ago, Gary saw his first CNC machine at a woodworking show and was fascinated by the possibilities the technology offered. Instead of simply buying a CNC machine, Gary decided to design and build his own! This separate project is chronicled at www.liming.org/cnc.

Shortly after finishing the CNC machine, Gary found a page from an 18th century book about an orrery, and thought that it would make a nice feature for his library. Asking around on-line, he was steered toward V-Carve Pro and soon upgraded to Aspire.

Gary started by sourcing the vector files needed to design the 12 Orrery panels and searched for vector images for all the constellations“I first got some images of the constellations of the zodiac off the net. There are an amazing number and variety of these. I wanted the symbols to lend themselves to a nice V-carved image. I typed in “free clipart zodiac vector” and got lucky, downloading a file with all 12 signs that fit the bill. Sometimes you get lucky!”

Gary then opened the vector files in Aspire and created the first panel. This was sized based on the math of a 12 sided polygon of a diameter that would comfortably house the gear train. Gary then placed the vector image on the blank panel, but felt the design looked a little sparse

“I added some lines above and below to direct the eye around the base, tying the panels together. I also wanted a bit more ornament, so I added a couple of symmetric ornaments under each sign.” "These were actually part of a font. 'Wingdings' was one of the first type fonts to represent symbols, and these were part of a free font called ‘WWFloral’ ”Après avoir dimensionné et positionné le personnage, Gary l'a converti en vecteur courbe, puis l'a retourné et allongé. Les 12 panneaux individuels ont été usinés et assemblés à des angles de 30 degrés pour former la base.

La capture d'écran à droite montre le dessus ouvert de l'orrery, également réalisé dans Aspire.

« Il s'agit d'une image scannée d'un dessin de John Tribe, que j'ai importée et à laquelle j'ai adapté des vecteurs courbes, comme indiqué sur la capture d'écran. Je ne me suis pas soucié des bords extérieurs de la planche, car j'avais déjà créé un disque rond pour le dessus sur lequel j'allais effectuer cette gravure. »

Les engrenages du mécanisme ont été conçus dans un logiciel spécialisé. Si vous souhaitez en savoir plus sur ce projet, une description détaillée étape par étape est disponible sur le site web de l'orrery à l'adresse www.liming.org/orrery

. Gary a déclaré ceci à propos de Vectric et du produit Aspire :“I think the software is a delight to use. Donald Knuth once said that all software should be written twice - once to figure out how to do it, and again to make it easy to use. I think this is exemplified in your product set. I attended the Dallas Vectric user group meeting and will be attending the Memphis meeting as well. I find I get a lot out of the meetings.”

Gary Liming