Jigging up

Monday 6-3-2006 Today we started the manufacture of our snowboards in earnest. The first of the jigs was cut out on the CNC. But only after a couple of false starts. One of the first things that we did in my teacher training was to go over and over the importance of making sure that you are prepared for the class. Well, clever clogs here did not 'live' test the programming for the jig profiles and after preparing the panels, going through the boot up and operation of the CNC with the students I let everyone down when the programming failed. After much head scratching and some frantic phone calls the problem was fixed and we got to work. Apparently there are some little tricks to applying tooling radius correction to DXF generated tool paths. In the end I remembered the same thing from a past job and changed the tool to one with a smaller radius and it all went fine.
The photo below has Dave and Oz inserting dowels to make sure that the job does not move when machining. We are using the vacuum to hold down the job but as we are using unsealed MDF there was a bit of slippage. I already had dowel holes in the profiles to align them for laminating. These were drilled into the sacrificial sheet and short dowels inserted through the profile into the sacrificial sheet. This coupled with the vacuum did the trick.


This is the profiles completed on the bed waiting to be removed. Dowels can be seen in the profiles.



Jamie and Corey checking our sample board with the first batch of profiles.



The profiles are now glued together to make up the completed jig for vacuum pressing of the boards. Next week I plan to run the first (prototype) board using the jig. This is to allow me to check the planned process (remember - be prepared) and to test the core thicknesses/board stiffness performance. After the first one is fully cured I'm going to test the lateral and torsional stiffness against a few borrowed 'good' boards. If it is all in the same region then we are set to go for the student boards.