Hi Paul,

I'm now a retired (eyesight is now shot) Jeweller mostly doing CAD/CAM work for other Jewellers.
Last year I had to do a big Belt Buckle for one of the Motorcycle Clubs over here.
So I did all of the designing for it only using MoI.

While in the process of doing the Buckle, I had to do a couple of prototype bases...that were consequently rejected...
So waste not, want not...here's a Buckle Base...if it's of use then that's great!!

Just so you know this Buckle was designed to be milled on both sides, so it's a bit more involved than what you were previously talking about.
This is why the pin is designed as a straight taper...so it could be milled & then bent to shape after it was all finished.

BTW, I ended up milling the finished Buckle design in wax on my Roland MDX-15 mill...
...the finished wax was cast in metal, cleaned up, rubber moulded & last I heard there was five being made in Bronze.

regards Colin

BurrMan,

I've never used a CAM program, so all help is appreciated.

I was thinking of starting with LazyCAM as it is included with MACH3 which I'm using to control the X3 CNC mill that I just completed. I checked LazyCAM and they support only round and rectangular pocketing, their wasn't any mention of islands. I hear the terms pocketing and islands on CNCzone.com and know what they are.

I'm not sure what other inexpensive CAM programs are available.

Paul


Colin,

Thank you the belt buckle info. Since I'm new at this I was only going to mill one side of the buckle, use a press to dome the belt buckle and do a post operation to add the pin. I like the idea of the integrated belt loop, I was thinking of using one that I could solder to the back of the belt buckle.

I had thought of using wax models, but since I live in an apartment....casting was out of the question.

The set of buckles that I plan on doing will be machined from brass.

You belong to a jewelery design site, I don't recall which one, but that's how I ended up at MOI.

All my past jewelery experience has been using lost-wax casting and fabrication from sheet, etc.

Paul

I have stock of brass, cast aluminum and machineable wax.

Thanks to everyone!

Hi Paul,
>>>> was thinking of starting with LazyCAM as it is included with MACH3 which I'm using to control the X3 CNC mill that I just completed. I checked LazyCAM and they support only round and rectangular pocketing, their wasn't any mention of islands. I hear the terms pocketing and islands on CNCzone.com and know what they are.>>>>

I noticed in lazy cam in the pocket menu there is a checkmark to "create islands". If you have a circle and put a circle inside of it, then your software should be able to designate that as an "Island". Basically means "dont cut this". So in your model I posted a picture earlier of, The inner circle I told to be a pocket and the "GOT" letters I told to be Islands and it cut around them.

Basically the more you pay for your software the more features you'll get. So like doing a basic pocket with some islands with lazycam, its a one shot deal, with little control of the toolpath and how/where it goes. Higher end stuff can allow you to set different heights for different islands and choose different types of entry for the toolpath and control which way it goes.

Lazycam will be a nice free start. after that I'd find some inexpensive stuff to move up to first until you know more of exactly what you need. The higher end stuff gets expensive and no need to pay for features you just dont need.

Oh Yeah,
If you want to practice doing 3d toolpaths also, you could go to mecsoft.com who make visualmill and look for the link to "FreeMill". It will do 3dm files and has a simple wizard driven interface thats a great place to start and generate code to send to your machine. It may be a little buggy as it is a very simple version so if you dont set things up right it crashes. (At least for me) but that is also a great learning tool.

They also have some higher end stuff to move to later. I havnt used it but they have been around they even have a rhino plugin for cam.