More Rhino Fun Times

Last weekend I was planning on finishing up all of my work on Rhino so I could get down to the CAD/CAM Suite on Monday to see about this CNC milling business. 

Well, as always it didn't end up happening quite as smoothly as planned!

The stuff of nightmares.. 

Having spoke to Richard (the CAD/CAM technician) last week I had a plan of exactly what to do on Rhino to make my desired shape- you might have seen my earlier post describing my theoretical process. I already had a basic knowledge of Rhino and I thought that between this and internet tutorials of the things I wasn't sure of I could follow the plan and everything would be fine. However I was not excepting to come up against half the problems that I did- who even knew that curves could be 'proper'.. To cut a long, tragic story short my knowledge of Rhino was basically next to nothing. 

The wiggly lines? I don't even know. 

Thankfully though the technically able didn't give up on me and I was given step by step help until I managed to come up with something CNC mill-able. 

Hooray!

 My final design ended up having to be really simplified in order to actually be able to be milled- and to stop my head exploding with confusion. For example, the smallest available drill bit was 3mm so the design has to be appropriately spaced which (for the overall size of lens I want) meant taking away a lot of the finer details.  The kaleidoscope effect also had to go but more just so I could get my head around it all. I feel as though I have leaned loads from this process, and that I wouldn't have got half as much from it if it had all went right the first time. I would maybe even chance saying that if I went go back through the process now I could confidently add back in some of the more complex details. This has been a success, albeit a very stressful one.