Quoted:
I really enjoyed watching those videos, AeroE.
The filming/production is so much nicer than some of the blurry HSM stuff on Youtube, and the technology they demonstrate is astounding. The machining center being operated by the Asian guy is especially awesome.
The five-axis one actually creeped me out a little, though.
Some things should simply not exist! It's
evil, I tell ya!
I was fascinated by manipulating the local surface tangency normal to the cutter centerline; the wheels were turning (in my head!), making me think we need to be more aggressive about the design and manufacture of some of our parts. There will be a battle with the manufacturing guys about the cost of programming for small runs of parts, but I'm thinking they need to be educated and open their minds a little. Most of our work is not terribly precise except at the interfaces with other parts, and even then we have no better than +/- 0.010 inches on large machined parts. Mechanisms get more precise treatment, but they are fabricated by specialist vendors anyway.
Back in the 80's I envisioned using a destructive plating process in which the mandrel is consumed while being replaced with metal. In this way large one piece assemblies of "bones" could be fabricated. I won't tell you the material for the mandrels because you'll laugh and post the
smiley. Maybe a couple of others, too. Anyway, in this video we see the start for a different process.