A few days ago,
some friends of mine from Microsoft stopped by with
some junk X-Box circuit boards. So, we stuck them under the
machine,
and cut them to bits.
Above: Circuit
board under the waterjet, ready to be sliced to pieces.
The circuit
boards, and components on them cut quite nicely. I
was surprised how clean the cut turned out to be.
Below: Why not
cut the whole box?
Above: A
prototype X-BOX cut into an "X".
After cutting,
the X-BOX was filled up with gunk (mostly abrasive), so
we had to hose it out with fresh water. Above is the resultant
cut. Notice how it's a pretty clean cut near the top, but the air
pockets disturbed the jet as it continued cutting, creating a more
ragged cut as it continued through. If you were cutting a solid
block of steel of this thickness, the results would actually be quite a
bit better, because the sides of the steel would keep the jet
coherent. One trick for making the jet more coherent for this
part might have been to fill it with wax, do the cut, then melt the wax
out later. That would help prevent the air from disturbing the
jet.
One must also
keep up to date with the latest technology. Above is an X-BOX
360, with a 360 degree cut-out.
Above: A special fixture was cut, using the waterjet, to hold a
stainless steel bearing still, so we could precisely locate its
center, and cut an "X" logo right in the middle. The fixture was
made by simply cutting a piece of 1/2" (12mm) aluminum plate in the
shape shown above. A slot was cut down the center so that the
clamp can have something to squeeze to hold the bearing. This
worked quite well, and was pretty easy to do. Since the fixture
itself was cut on the machine, we knew exactly where the center of the
hole was, so we could start our cutting of the "X" exactly in the
center as well.
Above: The bearings placed into aluminum plates (also cut out with the
abrasivejet) to make cool desk toys for Microsoft folk. (Note:Please
don't ask me to send you one of
these. These were made for microsoft employees, and
I
respect their trademarks and such, and won't violate that by sending
people stuff like that. Sorry!)
Above: A circuit board with letters cut in it. Notice how the
pins on the connector were severed in half right down the middle.
Some answers to some frequently asked
questions about the above:
The machine
made to do the cutting was an OMAX 2652.
The X Box cut
into an "X" took about 40 minutes or so. We cut it quite slowly
to get a better quality cut, and also to make sure that it would
completely cut through in areas of thick metal, such as the vertical
fins of heat sinks, and such. We probably could have cut it
quicker, but we played it safe since this was a total experiment. The X
Box 360 with the circle cut in it was quite a bit faster - maybe 20
minutes if I remember correctly. The reason for cutting a circle,
is because "360" is the number of degrees in a circle.
The circuit
boards cut easily. The word "X-Box" only took maybe a minute to
cut or so. Most of the time on these was spent trying to
find a way to hold the circuit boards flat without them jiggling around
durring cutting.
Programming
the cut was a simple matter of drawing the shape in CAD. No biggy
here.
The machine
that did the cutting was equipped with a "Tilt-A-Jet"
cutting head, which tilts the head to remove taper for a very straight
edge. However, in this case, tilting was turned off, since the
cutting models built into the controller could only guess how the jet
would behave when cutting through such mixed media and thicknesses and
such.
No, I
don't have any give-aways. These logos and such are trademarked,
so they went to Microsoft people only, and done in a very small
quantity.
Speaking of
Video Games, below is the logo for one of the top games of
2005 - Half Life 2 This logo is machined from 1/2"
(12mm) aluminum:
Below is the
above part being drawn in CAD software. The red and
black image in the background is an image that I found on the Internet
somewhere. I simply used a 3 point circle command to place the
circles, then draw some lines for the "Lambda" thingy in the
middle. To draw the letter "2", I just inserted some True Type
Text, since I figured that would be easier than re-drawing it.
I could have
used some automatic tracing software to do this, but for
CAD parts, where exacting precision is preferred, doing it by hand is
more appropriate, since it is very easy to specify exact circles, where
the tracing software may not be so smart, and would probably result in
a sloppy drawing.
To view a video
of drawing of the above part, making a tool path, and
starting the cutting visit the Waterjet
Video page
of this web site (or
click here to start the
video now).
The total time to draw the part was approximately
10 minutes, and the video is about 14 minutes long. If I remember
right, cutting time was about 3.5 minutes in 1/2" (12mm) aluminum.
Since
I posted the above, I have
received a few requests from people asking me if they can buy one of
these logos. Sorry, I'm not in the business of selling stuff like
that (also it's trademarked). However, if you think the above
logo is cool, and you want
someone to cut you out something
similar, or perhaps modify your computer case into a true gaming
system, then check out the various waterjet
job-shop listings. Also, the
Half Life 2 thingy in the corner
is the Microsoft Windows
Media Player, with a custom Half-Life2
"skin", in
case you are wondering. If you are interested in cool Windows Media Player Visualizers,
check out PlasmaVis.
