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Post by Deleted on Mar 15, 2013 12:16:14 GMT -5
Just designed the pieces in CAD and handed them the STEP-files. Do we (the Tousando community) have a library of CAD/CAM files that can be used with various machines to produce the pieces needed for different kinds of armor? I ask because I recently joined TechShop, and while I have not taken the training required to operate the laser cutters, CNC metal lathes, or water jet cutter, I will probably do so within the next year and wanted to get the ball rolling. TechShop isn't free, and neither is time on the water jet, so I'm not volunteering to make armor plates for everybody, but I see these machines in front of me and my mind begins to noodle. They've only been open here in Pittsburgh for a couple of weeks, and I've been enjoying using the wood shop portion while I still have free time.
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Post by schindibee on Mar 15, 2013 15:53:52 GMT -5
Great idea!
I'll gladly provide my stuff in various formats, currently available are the STEP's and the SolidEdge .par's on which they are based. Plus CorelDraw .cdr's and of course .pdf (which usually are enough to create STEP's from)...
Question is just where to store the files and make them available for the community... Any ideas?
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Post by pallidus on Mar 15, 2013 16:58:47 GMT -5
Hey Ishiyama - I've made half our stuff in the original tech shop in Menlo Park, and the other half in Tech Shop San Jose. I also used to teach metal shop there and powder coating there. So far we have produced close to 8 suits out of Tech Shop, so I have a lot of experience there. We designed, cut, punched, bent, fit, riveted, and powder coated everything there.
We used the water jet cutter only for kohaze, given the expenses. The time it will take you to design the parts and get the machine to cut them correctly will take forever. Its faster and cheaper for most stuff using the beverly shear and a buying a roper-whitney punch. Keep in mind that if you are doing a one-off piece, the time investment will not work out. If you are doing many suits, they each have to be individually fitted, so you have to do it over for each suit.... Let me know what questions you got about working in Tech Shop and I will be happy to answer!
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Post by pallidus on Mar 15, 2013 16:59:45 GMT -5
hey Schindibee - what files do you have?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 17, 2013 6:33:43 GMT -5
Hey Ishiyama - I've made half our stuff in the original tech shop in Menlo Park, and the other half in Tech Shop San Jose. Neat! It's possible you have seen my friend Kurt there. He normally spend a bunch of time there in the autumn making costumes for the kidlets and holiday presents for the family. Average height and more than average hair (hasn't had a haircut or shave since 1988), that's our Kurt. Awesome. That's what I like to hear. Here's my thinking. Most of the people I know who are making armor for fighting make their armor from ABS or Kydex sheet. Having the water jet able to cut (and drill!) all the pieces for a suit of armor from sheet goods saves so much effort. Sizing is just an exercise in parametrics. Think I can get them to give a group rate to SCA members? Think I can convince somebody to give a single 6-hour SBU class on the entire textile shop instead of one class for each machine?
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Post by tanuki on Mar 18, 2013 5:17:43 GMT -5
I'm making my suit out of hon kozane scale, yeah I don't want to manually drill all those millions of holes either! Hence, I'm using my cnc machine I'm picking up in about a month for real work. I'll happily add all my files to the database if we get one going. I'm going to be using scale #2 on Effingham-sensei's .pdf by the way, kamakura/nanboku-cho era. I might actually get to scale designing for some of the others as well. Over on the 405th.com (Halo costuming community) we have a 4shared.com setup that has all of the files for our armour builds. We have links to it throughout the forum community. Here's an example: www.405th.com/forum/armor-uniform-and-prop-making/noob-forum/39627-psa-%C2%96-the-405th-pepakura-databaseI have no idea how this stuff works as communicating in a forum is high tech for me. But it does work rather well over there for different armour types, etc.
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Post by pallidus on Mar 18, 2013 11:52:03 GMT -5
Hi Ishiyama - I'm pretty sure they won't give group rates, but I think thats up to each individual manager. I understand what you are saying about cutting the plates out seeming difficult, but with the water jet costs two dollars a minute... It will take at least 40 minutes to cut out lames for an okegawa dou. If you want it to punch holes it will take twice that. So probably about $160 just to cut out the dou. It would be just as fast to cut them on a beverly shear, and mark the holes for folks to punch. You could also offer it at a much more reasonable price too.
Remember that the majority of the time of using a water jet is punching the holes. Its about 10 seconds per hole. My suit has about 1400 holes, and it is only an okegawa dou. If you are doing scales there will be a LOT more...
Another possibility is to get it cut with a cnc plasma cutter, but the tip has to be kept in extremely good conditions to cut the holes accurately.
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Post by schindibee on May 6, 2013 14:15:50 GMT -5
I got my next lot from the laser-cutters, so now it's off to the workshop with my bag of hammers! Plates for my dô, laser-cut from 2mm steel-sheet... ...and a fresh and a not so fresh top-plate for the sode! The example to the right represents my very first attempt at working with steel, so it's not very refined yet (or finished). But hey, I'm positively surprised how easily the steel can be formed (even by a noob like me...) - and it's great fun too! Btw, knowing that I am a beginner I directly had me more plates cut than actually needed, so I can train myself a bit without having to 'destroy' all the material for the final armour...
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Post by schindibee on May 6, 2013 14:55:36 GMT -5
Oh, I also worked with the plates for kote and haidate which I had me made earlier! I needed tho shape them too, but thought long and hard to find a method to make the plates all the same and in the shape I wanted. Here my slightly crazy solutions: The splint-like little plates I need for my haidate were put in a vice with some aluminium-plates to which I glued two or one half-round brass rods... ...in between which the little plates were put, aligned properly, and bent by simply tightening the vice... ...and (TADAAA!!!), easily and uniformly mass-produced plates! Even crazier (yeah, the first one was actually quite conventional) was my idea to create a template for the slightly rounded plates for my kote - I was doubtful I could easily create a template from wood, but suddenly had the idea of laminating cards to create exactly the shape I need: I'm not sure if it is clear from the picture, but I simply stacked the cards in two stacks, and 'shifted' the cards of both stacks to the side, so that when looked at from the front, the cards would form an open space in the shape I wanted. The whole thing the fixated with generous amounts of super-glue, and finished was my template into wich I can now dish my plates! And it just took me about 10 minutes to create the whole thing...
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Post by Kozure Okami on Jan 23, 2015 6:32:51 GMT -5
Hey schindibee,
that's some cool stuff there! I'm excited to see that someone else had the idea of laser cut parts before I (or rather: a coworker of mine) did. But I was wondering, how come the parts were so expensive? $70 per bag of fifty kikko seems awfully much for me. Is it because you used a) stainless steel and b) had the company do the postprocessing, i.e. deburring? My guess is that doing the deburring yourself should drop the price considerably..
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