Shrimp

I made this little shrimp mold today with some scrap metal I had on hand.

It's based on a clay model my friend gave me. Of course I had to change a few things to make it work. The sharp corners had to be omitted because those would be impossible without EDM. It came out great, though. Once again I had to use the extra length 1/8 ball mill for the surfacing and deal with the chatter but it came out well.  I used a parallel finish with a .015 stepover.

Here is a picture of the finished product!
Now to just test it out and hope it catches some fish.

"Spinal Tap" Worm

This is my latest project.  A 7.5" long bass worm I milled out for a fellow fisherman who frequents my favorite fishing forums.




He gave me a pdf scan of a hand pencil drawing to work with and I plugged it into solidworks to take some general measurements with. He actually drew it to scale and besides not using a ruler he did a pretty good job for someone not familiar with blueprints or the machining process.  He had quite a few sharp corners that would be impossible do to without EDM so we had to work out a few changes but I think it came out pretty faithful to his drawing otherwise. 









I'm really pleased with the way it came out.  The final finish didn't turn out quite as well as I had expected as the finish on one side of the worm showed some tool deflection.  I was using an extra long flute length carbide 1/8" ball mill for the finish with high feed.  The surface finish is always poorer with high feed but I was expecting better since I only allowed it to ramp up to a 80ipm max feed instead of the Haas mill's max feed rate.




The tail of the worm is the only part that isn't done with a surfacing toolpath, I added a chevron pattern of slots onto his design that I think look really neat.









The finish looks great on the final molded worm, however, as it gives it kind of a digital look.