erin ethridge sculpture

This summer, I helped Erin Ethridge machine some bearing "top hats" for a sculpture she was working on. We cut the majority of the part on the Tormach and then bored the bearing seat on the South Bend 9". The bearing was a press fit using the hydraulic press. These turned out really nice. She recently installed the piece in Texas.

paratech multiforce

Eric emailed me this week to let me know that the Multiforce lifting bag was released this week. Eric does design work for Paratech and I believe this is one of many large design projects that he has worked on for them. I did a few machining operations for him on a couple tooling pieces for this particular project. It's cool to finally see the completed product so I can fully understand what it was I was cutting on the mill and router.

manhole cover

A few months ago, I assisted a former UWM alum, Melanie Ariens, with a project for Milwaukee DPW. She was working on submitting a design for a manhole cover and she needed some help realizing her design in Rhino so that it could be translated to be cut via CNC machine. She ended up winning the bid and now the pattern is being cut at the Foundry in Neenah. She sent some images to show me the work they're doing. 

She wrote: The image will take the entire weekend to mill, then they will mill the text separately on Monday and Tuesday. Then off to the foundry! 

This is a great example of the skills that the students in the DCRL can put to work when they harness digital modeling and cmc skills with traditional craft forms like foundry. I can't wait to see this iron covering out on the street someday soon.

start-up challenge: speed skates

The speed skates that I worked on by brazing machined components to the blades, along with Brent's story was featured on the UWM homepage today. If you look closely you can see the sanded paint on the blade holders where I brazed the rear ratchet components on. You can read more here.