Quirky Turn Mill Build

[vtcnc]

For linear bearing housings I thought I'd try making castings using the lost foam process. I normally make wooden patterns when casting, but I got inspired by the great pix and commentary on BuildYourIdea.com and wanted to try this method out. The advantage is that relatively thin and complex castings can be made this way, without the need for draft -- that is, tapering the sides of patterns so they can be drawn out of the greensand.

It took a couple tries to work out what the bearing housings should look like. Well, drew it out in Sketchup actually, so not very spontaneous after all, then converted to a fake airfoil.dat file so I could use Jedicut to cut it out of foam on my homemade 4 axis hot wire cutter. Final version shown below. Also a test of the fit on the frame rails. (the pink versions were not final, I went with the blue, which have bosses for accepting screws and an upright edge for the gantry box):