Design | Cut | Build - Universal Tire Carrier Project

[El Jefe]

Advanced Torchmate CAD Project Universal Tire Carrier.


While we have a lot of basic CAD tutorials available, our Tech Support team thought it would be desirable if we started doing advanced projects to help our users develop improved manufacturing processes beyond art projects. We have been working on a few ideas that exceed basic capabilities and focus on designing your parts to aide in the assembly process.


We encourage our Fabrication Forum members to improve this basic design and share your improvements. For this project we created a very basic design that focuses on skill sets. There is plenty of room for improvement built into the foundational design of this project, we look forward to seeing how our members crowd source improvements.


The Tech Support team is currently developing a lesson plan to accompany this project for our educational customer’s; it will be made available in the Fab Lab when complete. All DXF files will be provided.


I will let the Tech Team share the details of this really cool project that I hope people can utilize.

Stay tuned for a lot more advanced projects as we head into summer.

 

[Arkansas Metal Art]

Is there supposed to be an attachment?

 

[El Jefe]

Tech guys got busy on the phone this afternoon and have not had a chance to start sharing the project. We falsely anticipated a slow day and the phones blew up. Coming soon.

 

[Matt]

Here's an overview of the project we are doing and an idea of what it will take to complete. This was done on our latest software and systems, but can easily be adapted to our older systems since most of the work involved was CAD. (Look for an update ~Tuesday)
For info in the meantime on some of the skillsets needed please see:
http://torchmate.com/university


Advanced Manufacturing Processes

Objectives:

• Determine methods for meeting part tolerances
• Define how tool kerf affects cut quality
• Application of multiple skillsets
• Designing parts to improve the manufacturing process

Materials/Tools Needed:

• TM CAD Software
• Torchmate CNC table
• VMD Software
• 3/16” Mild Steel

Skillsets Needed to Complete:

1. Simple Shape Creation
2. Arranging shapes by Coordinates
3. Part layout with Array
4. Make Path
5. Tool Setting Modifications
6. Utilizing keyways to improve part assembly/Applying knowledge of design concepts to improve assembly methods

 

[Matt]

This is the dimension file for the inner parts of the project. There are a variety of ways you can go about getting this cut out. The main goal is to use the tabs in order to get better fitment to make it easier to assemble and weld together. This means getting the kerf width set right and finessing the file to optimize the fit of these areas. The outside will have similar parts plus the top and will take similar methods to complete.

Stay tuned to see our favorite methods for working this file. If you have a method you liked using, we wanna see what you did and how it worked for you!

 

[Matt]

Here are some images of the parts cut out and fitted together to show how the fitment should work out.

 

[LECS-Chad]

This is a great universal project that covers not only the array tool but understanding "past" the table. Welders rejoice!

 

[Matt]

Here is the second part to the project. This piece goes around the 1st part of the project.

 

[2CUTS2GO]

Thank for the files