# Wooden Rocket Ship Party Gift



## SLAC_Engineer (Feb 23, 2012)

My son's birthday party is coming up and the theme is rocket ships. I committed to my wife to make the party favors. I decided to go with some artsy wooden rocket ships. The main body will be an ash/walnut glue up with a third tail fin for support. The tail fin will be of ash and have a through tenon that shows on body of the rocket. Don't know if this makes sense.

The are two unique qualities to this project. 

1. I have to make 20 pieces in a relatively short time (two weeks)

2. I have a machine shop and have never really incorporated it into my work. I would like to start doing this more and more. On one hand I love working with hand tools but I would like to start exploring mixed media and doing things that you would otherwise not find in woodworking. For this project, because I have to make 20 pieces I am going to machine a couple of templates for routing out the parts on the router table.

Here is the CAD layout for the templates. These will be CNC'd from aluminum. Most of the parts that I CNC can be broken down into 2D profiles. For these kind of parts I start with a sketch in AutoCAD and then export a .dxf file which is used by the CAM software to define the machine tools paths. 



















As a side note, In the layout there is a middle part that is a radius template for a cutting board I am also working on. I want to knock off the edges with a nice smooth radius.










Back on topic, Once I export the .dxf file into the CAM software I need to define the toolpaths. Basically you define the cutting tools you will be using, feeds, speeds, depth of cut, etc and the software calculates the appropriate offsets and spits out the tool path/G-code which defines the motions of the CNC machine. Here are some shots of the toolpaths.



















Last night I glued up the wood blanks and planed them down this morning. They are now waiting on the templates to start cutting out parts.










I will post more as I go along. Thanks for looking


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## cabinetman (Jul 5, 2007)

Looks to be very interesting. I bet those templates will be perfect. Looking forward to the process.










 







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## rayking49 (Nov 6, 2011)

This looks very interesting. I'm looking forward to this.


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## VIFmike (Jul 21, 2012)

What CAD program are you using?


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## SLAC_Engineer (Feb 23, 2012)

VIFmike said:


> What CAD program are you using?


For 2D CNC and layout work I use AutoCAD.

For 3D modeling I use SolidWorks at home, Pro-E WildFire and Solid Edge at work.

99% of my CNC parts comes from AutoCAD, I have done a couple of 3D surface parts from Solidworks, but this is rare.


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## Shop Dad (May 3, 2011)

Looks like those will be some nice party favors! I like the cutting board. Nice work so far.


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## johnnie52 (Feb 16, 2009)

I am very familiar with the whole CNC process so it will be interesting to see your end product.

I also use AutoCad for design of the things I make.

One question though. Why use that over priced POS Pro-E for the 3D work instead of Solidworks? I can't think of a single reason why anyone would choose that program unless they are forced to because of a customer's demands.


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## SLAC_Engineer (Feb 23, 2012)

johnnie52 said:


> I am very familiar with the whole CNC process so it will be interesting to see your end product.
> 
> I also use AutoCad for design of the things I make.
> 
> One question though. Why use that over priced POS Pro-E for the 3D work instead of Solidworks? I can't think of a single reason why anyone would choose that program unless they are forced to because of a customer's demands.


Debating software is dangerous ground. My employer was embedded with Pro-E so that's what I was stuck with. I have quit a bit of experience with both packages and they have their pluses and minuses. Pro-E has actually gotten alot better over the last 10 years. It's more like SolidWorks now. If you want to talk about a crappy CAD package give Solid Edge a run, It's makes Pro-E seem like a walk in the park.


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## SLAC_Engineer (Feb 23, 2012)

Here are some updates from today. I finished the templates and started dinking around with actual wood. If there are any machinists in the forum be gentle. I am not a machinist but have picked up the basics from my own trials and tribulations. I'm sure there are easier ways to doing the things I do but my system works for me; albeit not very efficient in time or material.

Start by cutting off two pieces from an 8ft bar. This is 3/8" x 6" 6061-T6. I didn't have any 1/4" stock so I was stuck with 3/8" flat bar.









One piece is the backer for the part; the other piece is for the actual parts. The backer allows me to cut all the way through the part and also gives me something to bolt the part to so it doesn't fly off when the part separates from the body/tree. 









Next step is to drill a bunch of, what seems to be, random holes.









Once machined they are read to go.









Finished templates. There are three in total, the rocket ship, the tail fin, and the fin support.









The fin support will get bolted to a board as a backer. This will get clamped to my Leigh FMT and then I can machine the tennon onto the tail fin. You can see how a finished tail would be well supported in the holder.









For the rocket ship body I first traced it our on the wood stock.









Then I rough cut it on the band saw









And finished it up on the router table with a template bit. I am still figuring some things out with this guy. I don't know how much detail I want to put into it and I haven't quite figured out how I am going to do the mortise. I might just clamp it to the FMT and keep it simple. I also don't know what I want to do with the "center viewport" I think it needs to be filled or I may just leave it off from the finished design. 


















Tomorrow I will try out the tail fin and hopefully get the two pieces together as one. After that it's on to the monotony of production work.


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## Kenbo (Sep 16, 2008)

Very cool.
:thumbsup:


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## johnnie52 (Feb 16, 2009)

That is the best example of combining metal work with wood work that I've seen in some time. The rocket looks really cool. A picture of a spaceman with a clear plexi cover would look neat in the window.

I figured that either the company had the software or a customer had required it. The last time I even looked at ProE was over 20 years ago. Back then is was a over burdened piece of junk with sub menus 10 layers deep and no keyboard short cuts that required a specially built computer to run! Acad was selling for $500.00 a copy compared to over 5k for ProE and another 5k for the computer to run it....


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## SLAC_Engineer (Feb 23, 2012)

johnnie52 said:


> That is the best example of combining metal work with wood work that I've seen in some time. The rocket looks really cool. A picture of a spaceman with a clear plexi cover would look neat in the window.
> 
> I figured that either the company had the software or a customer had required it. The last time I even looked at ProE was over 20 years ago. Back then is was a over burdened piece of junk with sub menus 10 layers deep and no keyboard short cuts that required a specially built computer to run! Acad was selling for $500.00 a copy compared to over 5k for ProE and another 5k for the computer to run it....



Thanks again. I am still trying to figure out the window. I like the idea of plexiglass. I might do a picture of my son as a special one-off from the batch.

My first exposure to Pro-E was 16 years ago and it had to run on a Sun Microsystems machine. I do remember the layers upon layers of menus. It's funny though, ProE is still about $5K but now autocad is in the $1K - $3K price range. But these are two different beasts. I don't think I would ever consider autoCAD for 3D work.


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## johnnie52 (Feb 16, 2009)

SLAC_Engineer said:


> I don't think I would ever consider autoCAD for 3D work.


You would be so right! Acad has gone the way of a lot of things. They have hinged it to the Internet and made it almost useless as an out of the box program. AutoCad is a great tool for 2D but its always been a brick when it comes to anything in 3D :thumbdown: The only way to make Acad useful for 3D is to buy the add-on for Mechanical Desktop, or change over to Inventor. I've used Solidworks for several years and swear by it.

Of course both AutoCad and Solidworks are way over the reach of most "everyday folks". I was lucky enough to be able to buy copies through my Employer and get the lesser multi-copy cost whenever we upgraded our software. Of course now that I'm out of the workforce, I'll never get that kind of deal again.


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## VIFmike (Jul 21, 2012)

I was lucky enough to get Solidworks at my last job. I even have a copy on my home PC and laptop so I could work from home on projects when I was designing armored SWAT trucks. 

Not alot of use for it drawing tables and other wood items but I have been doing just that lately. Trying to learn sketchup too.

Looks like you have made good use of it on those templates.


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