Can this be made by CNC?

[imagineers]

So I thinking of trying to machine this out of aluminum, it is a dock for a magic mouse made by apple. Approx 5" long by about 5" long by about 3" wide by about 1.5" tall. The groove inside I guess is the question. i know the rest can be made with CNC. I dont want to cast if I can avoid it.

 

[berkshire]

You would have no problem milling that on a CNC mill, It might require a few cutter changes.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

 

[capnhook]

How do you plan to fixture it?

Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community..

[green]To the Toolmaker, your nice little cartoon drawing of your glass looks cool, but your solid model sucks. Do you want me to fix it, or are you going to take all week to get it back to me so I can get some work done?[/green]

 

[JNieman]

That is absolute cake for any 3-axis mill. Face and square a block, put it in a vice with soft jaws, let a ball mill go to town with whatever stepover / scallop height is required to meet your surface roughness desires. If you were really wanting to limit tool changes, or if you don't have an ATC, you could do it all with a ball mill, including side-milling the edges. If you hold the workpiece in jaws that are only 2-3 inches wide, on the flats, you could clear the ends enough to get the radii on the corners.

If you wanted some weight-reduction, or a pocket to include some electronics, you could mill that into the bottom side before flipping it over to do the contouring on top. Easy part.

_________________________________________
NX8.0, Solidworks 2014, AutoCAD, Enovia V5

 

[ornerynorsk]

Is this a one-off, or is it something that you plan on going into production? Machining from solid stock is your most expensive option, but you will have the least amount invested in tooling and fixturing.

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

 

[JNieman]

A really good dog-and-pony-show video shows the production of a similar product from some Kickstarter campaign. I forget what it's a dock for, but here:

https://player.vimeo.com/video/79927873

*edit* duh, iphone. Should have remembered.

_________________________________________
NX8.0, Solidworks 2014, AutoCAD, Enovia V5

 

[imagineers]

Thats awesome, thanks for all the information guys, I appreciate it.

 

[KENAT]

Seriously what volume, why not casting?

There are casting options with pretty good accuracy (not CNC good but reasonable) that give good surface finish, low porosity and reasonable tooling costs.

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[imagineers]

its for a client, and surface finish is important also.

 

[KENAT]

It's known by various names but rubber plaster molding might be worth checking.

Check out my buddy Bart giving his spiel if you want

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFl5VEecm_g

- he over sells the 'not needing draft' aspect a bit in my opinion as for certain features you do still need it to get good yield but it is less demanding than many other casting & molding processes.

(Bad news is because this was 2013 you don't get to see either of the parts he's made for me on his display stand ;-))

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(probably not aimed specifically at you)
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[dicer]

I worked at a proto type shop and we did that sort of thing all the time. It can take many hours to hemstitch with a small diameter ball nose cutter to do it though. You can also use SLA rapid proto typing or 3 d printing too.