Home made 3 axis mill

[Darth Malevelus]

follow this link.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Easy-to-Bu...illing-Machine/

The site claims you can build yourself a desktop computer driven 3 axis mill for less than 200 bucks.

with one of these you could rattle out costume pieces in minutes, rather than hour/days/weeks

 

[23Magnum]

As the Brewmasters would say, "BRILLIANT!".

But, you wouldn't be able to make armor pieces with this. It's too small plus the tool doesn't move any other direction besides vertically.
It would need to be about 5 times larger to get the biggest piece of armor, chest piece, and need a rotating base of some sort to move the piece of armor around enough to get to all the sides.
The best you could do is flatter 3D pieces.

You could be able to make armor in this way, but not with this equipment. Though, it has given me some ideas and I believe Vrogy is doing something similar.
Anyway, good find, this may be of some use.

-Magnum

 

[Darth Malevelus]

Well, he did say it was scaleable! LOL

Im going to look into it further on a decent connection. The one at work sucks.

Theres alot more in that site as well, tons of open source stuff to be had. I plan on doing quite abit of digging in it later.

 

[dudemann]

im not exactly sure but it does say 3 axis mill so i think it moves in 3 directions, not just vertically. Im not well versed in the subject, just what i got out of reading the instructable.

 

[Darth Malevelus]

yes a three axis mill will move up/down, front to back, then sideways as wel. The reach of this mill is emtirely up to the desinger, this design is scaleable , so it can be made bigger with a bigger reach if the maker wants it to.

I also found these:

Vac former:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-goo...t-plastic-vacu/

3d scanner:
http://www.instructables.com/id/David-3D-scanner/

Silk screening:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Silkscreen-Print-with-Vinyl/

Body armor:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Body-armor-from-craft-foam/

What I love about this site is its off the shelf cheap ways ofmaking expensive items.

For instance if you have a 3 axis mill, laser scanner, and a vacu-former, you can pretty much make anything.


As an axample: Say you have the legendary helmet from Halo 3 but your pissed it doesnt fit, use you home made inexspansive laser scanner, and scan it to your computer, now readjust the scale abit bigger.
Now using your new home made 3 axis mill carve out (quickly minutes or hours instead of days or weeks) your new legendary helmet in the proper size say out of wood, or foam.
Then reinforce the item by brushing epoxy over it, bondo what ever. now take it to your band saw and slice it into half, or into pieces to be vac formed.
Now vac form the new helmet. trim it, expoy it together, paint it and viola, in a day or two you now have a new fully wearable legendary helmet that you can actually wear. Instead of it taking days or weeks with tons of effort and time, now you can rattle out Halo parts almost effortlessly.

These are on my to do list for sure, not to mention my christmas list!! I hope santas listening!!

In the end your talking about maybe spending a couple hundred for all three of these items, instead of 10's of thousands. and the benefits are limitless.

This instructables site is worth spending several hours diging through. I wish I had found it years ago!
If I make these items I am planning on remaking a new vader helmet and dome but this time from scratch!

 

[cgspartan]

In order to make armor pieces and whatnot you would probably need a five axis mill not a three axis mill. The three axis mill is more for engraving and whatnot.

you'd need something like this.

though you could just modify the designs from instructables to do that, as long as you buy the right motors and controllers wouldn't really be a problem.

 

[Darth Malevelus]

got any off the shelf plans for it for about the same price? LOL

I could do armor pieces in halves with a three axis, and make the helmet molds in pieces. Since I would need to anyway to vac form things later, it would work fine I think.

The idea is,... use a 3d modeling program to set the scale, and break up the piece into parts to be cut out.

then take the milled pieces over to my soon to be vac forming machine and do a pull.

cut the pieces out and epoxy them together,

prime and paint.

Im working with a few of the guys at instructables to hopefully come up with blue prints for a machine that would have a 20 x 20 x 10 work area. That should be fine for costuming and basic stuff.

But yeah I wish I could afford a nice 5 axis toy like that!!!

I wonder if you could rig one of those robot arms you can buy at the sharper image to a 3d modeling program. mount a dremel on the hand and let her rip?

 

[NZTK]

use you home made inexspansive laser scanner, and scan it to your computer,

Unfortunatly at the moment there is no real cheap way of doing this, Ive tried various methods of scaning with pretty average results. The problem is you need a very expenvie digital camera to get decent point data from the scan, there is softweare out there that claims to be able to work with a web cam and a laser pointer, but trust me it dosnt really. also you need a good laser, cheap red diode pointer ones wont work, you need a good crisp green one. in about 5 yeras maybe this will be a reality for the home hobbyist but at present the tech is just too expensive

I wonder if you could rig one of those robot arms you can buy at the sharper image to a 3d modeling program. mount a dremel on the hand and let her rip?

Why not use your mind and hands? your mind has the most advanced 3d visualising capability known to man, and with practice your hands can be made to create anything the mind wants.

 

[Darth Malevelus]

he he Im wel aware of that, but robots are faster! And I can sit back and watch!

 

[Vrogy]

In order to make armor pieces and whatnot you would probably need a five axis mill not a three axis mill. The three axis mill is more for engraving and whatnot.

you'd need something like this.


though you could just modify the designs from instructables to do that, as long as you buy the right motors and controllers wouldn't really be a problem.

Not really. *shrug*