CNC maching at its finest.

[Bugsy]

Truly Amazing

[:)]

[Chancer]

Well yes and no!

The technology yes, the original helmet is 3D laser scanned and then the computer automatically writes the CNC programme and the machine takes it from there very impressive but there is no workmanship or skills involved at all and it is terribly wastefull to start with an 120kg billet of material to end up with IIRC a 3.6kg objet d'art.

In my day I would have had to do a detailed drawing of the component which would have been a real challenge with all the compound curves and would have involved many many sectional views and change of section views, then I or another drauhtsman would have to produce a casting drawing, the patternmaker would then make the pattern (using a patternmakers rule which has larger units to allow for the shrinkage) then a foundryman would produce the mould and casting. All very skilled trades which have all but died out in the UK.

The machining of the above object could not have been done fully by non CNC machine tools and would have needed hand fettling and polishing, we were one of the first to use CNC machines but every cut and gesture had to be programmed which was another highly skilled job a new trade then but which now has all but dissapeared such is the march of progress.

I recently saw several examples of the latest generation CNC machines like the above at an open day of a local subcontractor to the Airbus factory opposite me, they too machined everything from billet stock  I was shocked by the amount of waste, I think that they had a less than 10% rendement and certainly most of the factory was taken up with the compaction and forming into ingots of the waste material which had a volume several hundred times more than the pre-machined billet.

[Bugsy]

It was the technology to which I was referring Chancer. [:)]

.

[just john]

Can you tell what it is yet? [:)]

Vaguely reminds me of the prototype lost wax casting laser machines I watched at Renault F1 on a visit a while back, as they said then, outrageously expensive but essential to their requirements, and fascinating technology.

[Sunday Driver]

Reminds me of a documentary I saw on the telly years ago about the evolution of the Ford DFV.  It showed Keith Duckworth and his team doing all the design drawings, then the casting process for the block, etc.  If I remember correctly, he had to redesign the block because of unwanted stresses on the headbolts.  He cured the problem by changing them from vertical to angled - or vice versa (can't recall which).