Good morning boating world the day is starting early with a cool task: make a rudder foam core. Indeed J.M., a friend asked us to shape this core with the CNC for a rudder of a small boat that he is planning to do. Some obvious benefits to this solution of manufacturing the foam core:
- gain of time
- accuracy - computerized cuts
The shape looks like this:
The brief is to make 2 halves that will be glued together around the rudder stock - this is a Rod that is stuck in the rudder and that rotates with the steering system of the boat to transmit the effort to the rudder and turns the boat left or right, port or starboard for the "sailing nurds".
My issue is that the part is too long for my Stepcraft inc machine. We will have to split the work piece in several parts. Those will be aligned and glued together during the lamination process. Not an issue for J.M. he is one of those crazy Carbon gurus coming from Brittany, the French "Mecca of sailing" that is also where most boats for the Vendee Globe, offshore Maxi trimarans get built. Those kind of boats and insane machines which everyone emphasis, admire and project themselves on while seeing them at the dock but would "crap themselves" on a day to day operation (please excuse my french, as a frenchman I love to say this).
But back to our task I have to cut the rudder in 4 pieces we call that tiling. This a bit like making a puzzle where we have to fabricate each pieces.
And 27989 line later, here comes the code. Straight from the drawing to the Machine. Isn't that cool? Nonetheless this is going to be a long cutting time which mean lots of DUST.
Lets do a test first to see if things will go according to plan. The setup and centering of the work piece is an important and meticulous step. For the test piece I will use left over foam that I have. It is a lighter foam but does not make any difference and the tool love cutting into foam.
Now that we did valid the test - let's go real and cut the stock, The circular saw is "laughing" and cuts foam like butter.
Back to the CNC and start to cut the perimeter
The CNC is now doing the roughing passes:
Some DUST and more DUST
And now here come the final cuts.
It's almost like when in the past (or even nowadays), you develop your own photographes - suddenly the image appears in the bath of chemicals - like magic. Here it's similar, the CNC machine does its numerous passes over the work piece and slowly but steady the shape of the final part appears - it's very similar - EXCEPT
- It is NOISY, not really like a Black room, quietest place on earth when the red light is on.
- DUSTY, you don't want dust on your photo do you?
Oops, let's be real: maybe my metaphor of revealing a photograph wasn't that great. Let's continue the cutting and keep making Dust.
And 36 hours later - JOB DONE!
This is how it looks, some light sanding for J.M. to smoothen the surface and ready for some carbon lamination.
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