metal block

It was cool to watch the Tormach hog this out of a block of aluminum bar stock.

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A PCB will bolt onto this. Some parts will be on the bottom, and will get hot, so we'll use gap-pads or thermally conductive putty to conduct the heat down to the block, which will itself get cooled somehow. Some of the cutouts are clearances for the pins of thru-hole parts.

This was hard to photograph; the shiny features mess with my camera's autofocus.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  
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John Larkin
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Yikes, those are some seriously coarse cuts. You can break tools that way, even in 6061 Al--I hope the safety shield was in place while people were around.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
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Reply to
Phil Hobbs

why you think so? the surface finish doesn't look great but looks can cheat

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

It was cool to watch the Tormach hog this out of a block of aluminum bar stock.

formatting link

A PCB will bolt onto this. Some parts will be on the bottom, and will get hot, so we'll use gap-pads or thermally conductive putty to conduct the heat down to the block, which will itself get cooled somehow. Some of the cutouts are clearances for the pins of thru-hole parts.

This was hard to photograph; the shiny features mess with my camera's autofocus.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement 
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Reply to
Carl Ijames

It's smooth and beautiful in real life. It's just hard to photograph.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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Reply to
John Larkin

Yea, looks like different radiuses were used, the machinists just used

2 tools to make the cuts. Looks like it took a long time to do.

Cheers

Reply to
Martin Riddle

There were three end mills, two drills, and a chamfer used. A 1/4 inch mill did the roughing, and a couple of smaller ones did the fine stuff. Small variations in cut depth are obvious in the photo but barely visible in the flesh. They don't matter.

Time on the Tormach, with manual tool changes, was about 20 minutes. In production, if that ever happens, we will have an outside shop make them, and time on a serious mill would be a lot less.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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Reply to
John Larkin

On Mar 8, 2018, John Larkin wrote (in article):

Try a light tent. And the focus-lock trick others have mentioned.

Joe Gwinn

Reply to
Joseph Gwinn

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