1972 Mazda Rx2- Moves to a new home

I have heard good things about Mach 3 for hobby use. No personal experience with it, but a lot of the guys that build the hobby type cnc machines use it. And it's fairly cheap. Think you can get a free trail download as well, so might be worth looking into? Delcam is fairly similar to Mastercam. There is another one, I think locally developed, incam maybe? Might be worth looking into as well. Just depends on your budget and what you want to use it for. I like Mastercam as I can use it for all my drawing, and then write programs straight from there for either the mill or the lathe. Also have the wire cutting version as well. Pity I no longer have access to that. Previous company had one, cut my teeth on wire edm there.

Ticker tape was just being phased out when I started.  We had an Agie wire edm machine that still had that option. Was a brilliant machine, accurate like hell. Had an interface made for it so it could be run off Mastercam. Boss bought two new edm machines in the 12 years I was with him, but that Agie never got sold. He just didn't have the heart !

As an aside, if you ever find yourself in Vienna, there is a museum of technology just around the corner from Schonnbrunn castle. Incredible place. Cars on the fourth floor. Helicopters and planes on the fifth floor. Heavily sponsored by Siemens, ABB and Otto Bock.  They have the latest robots etc all working, but they have an incredible section on machine tools. The whole history of cnc, including ticker tape!  Well worth a day there. Incredible what they have. 

Things not going to plan. Washed wound out. This needs stitches. curse word. Locked up and off to A and E. Now the fun starts. Finger throbbing like curse word. Traffic going nowhere slowly. At this rate my finger will fall off before I get near the hospital. Remembered the Vulcan was flying over the Headcorn air show, hence the traffic. Time for plan b. Made it to the hardware shop. Bought some gardening gloves and a bottle of superglue. Got back and glued my knuckle back together. Cut the middle finger off the glove. Put plasters over the superglue and the cut off glove finger over the whole lot. Job done.

Back to work then, hahaha. Disposed of the rest of the plastic maggots that now resembled the remains of a chicken tikka masala. Had liberated a bit of 12mm plate from the skip last week.



Started milling the shapes into it. Actually, right through it.



Called it a day. Went home and anesthetised my finger by drinking copious amounts of beer, all for purely medicinal reasons ....

As a matter of interest, are the photos from today the right way up?

^ This

Mind you if carlsburg did restos I think there would be less claret

I worked for a tool and die making company in South Africa for twelve years. That's where I learnt Mastercam. It pretty much was the industry standard. Don't get me wrong, it's a brilliant program. Very versatile. It can be daunting in the beginning because it seems as if there are way too many options to ,for example, create an arc. You can be up and running fairly quickly, learning as you go. There seems to be a whole drive with people believing everything needs to be modelled in solids. Total waste of time in my opinion. Why would I want a 3d model of a washer? Lol. Mastercam gives you the option with solids, surfaces, wireframe or 2d. Once you get your head around the way it thinks, there is nothing you cannot do.

We used to do a lot of plastic injection tools, mainly multi cavities for the medical field. Normally used to make a pilot tool, single cavity. Once customer was happy we would make multi cavity tools. Had a milling machine that was reputed to have been the second largest in the Southern Hemisphere , ex BMW in Rossyln. Company did bit press tools as well. I ran the big mill. Mastercam was brilliant in all aspects. Before I left we did all the aluminium diecasting tools used for the stadium lights for the football World Cup in 2010. Also did a big Canadian runner plastic injection mould for a grid used in the cooling towers of a power station. Wireframe was a very quick way of drawing the runners. Landed up making a hot runner tool using all the goodies from Mastip. Injecting in 16 different zones, the manifold was over 1500mm long! Most challenging job was a repair to a tool that weighed 13 tonnes. What was it you ask? A tool for making plastic garden chairs!

I now work for a multifaceted engineering company. Do a lot of production and batch work. Still make press tools, but mainly for our own use. Make a fair amount of stuff for a collection that restores WW2 tanks. A lot of my stuff is in a series on Quest,on a Thursday night, think it's called Military dealers? Anyway, Mastercam does it all for me. I will stick to what I know!



Did that for a customer from a old photo! It's the grease cap on the wheel !

That's it. Nick and Phil both work for Bruce. There is a new guy there also , Freddie ,and his son is doing an apprenticeship there.

Back onto the cnc for some profiles



Bit of urethane between the halves and into the press



Result



Another piece of the puzzle done



So, all in all a good day. The side panels are slowly taking shape.....



And in the next highly unthrilling instalment of one man and his rust.... What to do with a 20mm thick lump of steel......

What to do with a 20mm sheet of steel?

You probably mill it into a holidaycabin or a shopping mall.. :-)
epic work btw