Between 265 & 485 SQ/FT Kwik Fab's Small Shop

[KwikFab]

I hope he likes it...







I'm about to get the flanges bent in a second, but looking at it as is, I think this would look much better as a "layered" sign.

Once I reveal to my friend what I made, I'll suggest to him to glue up a colored background, or mount some 16 gauge steel painted a different color.

It'll add both depth, as well as rigidity.

 

[KwikFab]

Bender on the bender is priceless! Really cool assortment of projects!

New to fusion how well does the canvas feature work?

How can I put this -

Canvas is probably the slowest process for what I did. This is because many other CAD applications can create an SVG which can be imported into Fusion for immediate use.

Attaching a canvas is just that, a canvas. You still have to draw the item itself and Fusion isn't the best at artistic stuff.

It does come in handy when someone needs a part and they get a template scanned on a flatbed scanner. From there I take that picture and attach it as a canvas, followed by scaling it to a known dimension on the item itself.

This allows me to create as accurate of a copy as possible. Camera phones have a sort of fish eye effect which is why I tell people to not take a picture of the actual part for accuracy reasons.

But, I suffer from memory loss and I can't push myself to learn another CAD program with as often as I use my current one.

 

[KwikFab]

Just need to cut the 3/16" weld-on tabs for mounting, and this job's done.

 

[Blackbyrd]

I was working on a bezel insert (lots of arcs) and it was recommended to use canvas to draw the shape based on the image. But im like 90% close to final shape so it may not be worth it at this point.

 

[KwikFab]

I was working on a bezel insert (lots of arcs) and it was recommended to use canvas to draw the shape based on the image. But im like 90% close to final shape so it may not be worth it at this point.

For anything that isn't a standard radius or something, I'll definitely use the canvas feature.

Unless the item requested doesn't have to conform to any particular space, etc.

Then I'll just do something clean myself while keeping close to the actual part size.

 

[Blackbyrd]

I may give it a try, its a guage cluster bezel that drops into an existing structure but its got multiple arcs that contact exterior wall of what it sets in.

Thanks.

 

[KwikFab]

I may give it a try, its a guage cluster bezel that drops into an existing structure but its got multiple arcs that contact exterior wall of what it sets in.

Thanks.

Assuming it's symmetrical, you just have to draw half of it followed by mirroring it to make it complete.

 

[Blackbyrd]

It is ive been designing it in halves since my 3d printer couldn't print it all in 1 piece anyway.

 

[KwikFab]

Them - I have an item, if you can cut it out and bend it.

Me - Sure, send the DXF!

(moments later after trying to decipher things)

Me - Can I see how this whole thing goes together? Maybe some tolerances, etc?

Them -



Picture definitely helped, as I wasn't sure whether an item was bent one way or another.

Although, here's the DXF (screenshot) of the provided "design". It's the cardboard piece in the picture above by the way.



What I didn't add is that this is my business partner so I'm allowed to give him ****

I mean, look what I sent him when he finally made the "cardboard" mock up



Some basic modeling told me his DXF was way off and I'd have to redo most of it.

Here's my sketch.



The 3D model.



And the zig zag part I was keeping within a specific tolerance he later provided.



What I'm saying is, I'm glad this is the sort of stuff that comes to me almost daily as it really keeps my skills sharpened while not getting complacent and still taking the time to do a test cut and bend.

What's funny though is he absolutely hates anything CAD-related, and while I've always got his back, I've been really trying to encourage him to do the whole thing since he also runs a CNC table.

And for anyone wondering, I will be hitting the tiny flange twice in order to achieve something closer to 85 degrees or so. This is so that the very end acts like a good catch for the latch that goes over it.

Ideally I would run the flange on something like this to achieve a sharper bend.



But I'm not going to invest in such tooling for 5 or so parts total unless he wants to order it for me.

 

[KwikFab]

Cut tons of parts out today, but I'll share last night's bracket.

The first bend that needs to be done is the very tip of the catch here. You can see that after it's bent, it more or less tells me how much clearance I need from the die before the second bend.



Anyway I had all that calculated so onto the next bends.





Leaving the larger flange for last. This is because if I had done it first, it would interfere with the punch holder doing the bend at the tip of the catch.





******* mint.

 

[KwikFab]

Here's another item I originally designed, then redid much of, because he immediately grew tired of welding on some little tabs.

This is the center divider of the dual fuel carrier.



The original had "slots" where the tabs are, so my business partner can weld on some small mounting tabs. They get welded on as they allow the panel to be bolted in and removed.

This was per his request and I made all the holes and tabs line up perfectly for all the panels that bolt together.

That wasn't exactly easy to get first try lol

Anyway, he recently asked if I can implement some tabs which meant redoing the holes and spacing for everything including - the back panel, the bottom panel, the center divider, and the small front panel.

Had to snap all these pics because he swears everything I do is easy just because I get it all done quickly

















Finally. All that for just a center divider.

 

[KwikFab]

After we took him to class, he didn't even hesitate to say bye

 

[Old Man Roger]

You’re a terrible father.lol




I kid I kid. You raised him to be independent.

 

[madison069]

He was ready to get out of the house and play with other kids!

 

[KwikFab]

Went better than expected; he has no siblings and his only real friends (or better yet, his future wife) only sees him a few times a year so we were worried he was going to be a lot more selfish than he was today.

His future wife (my daughter in law to be) 2 years ago -



The two of them just last month -

 

[Chris F]

I know it's not but it looks like a cigarette in his right hand.

 

[Old Man Roger]

Even been to Indonesia?

 

[KwikFab]

I know it's not but it looks like a cigarette in his right hand.

You're right it does

It's this little 3D printed airplane he's had forever. I printed it when I made most of his airport for his hot wheels.



Y'all are always welcome to donate if you want to help him reach 1,000 cars

He's about 350 cars short of it...

 

[KwikFab]

Posting a **** ton of pics in the thread cause why not.





The other day I posted on here that I revised the fuel jug carrier quite a bit. I say that because the person I make these for wanted a change in the design where he no longer wanted to weld on tabs to the center divider. I explained this quite a bit already in the thread already so today I cut and bent the rear and bottom panels for test fitting purposes and ensuring my math was good (or not).

Here's the rear panel, which only has 3 flanges per side for a total of 2 bends.









The bottom panel has flanges on 3 sides with 3 at the bottom, and 2 per side for a total of 3 bends.













And here she is all put together; I really have to give myself a pat on the back for this one because all my math came out right on point. The adjustments I did to the holes on both the bottom panel and rear panel lined up exactly with the center divider. And the center divider flanges were done at the right length, with hole placement where I needed which was twice as hard to figure out since I had to match both left and right sides.

 

[KwikFab]

Don't trust a customer to know what they're doing.

Was sent this yesterday, which I cut and bent right away.





After sending pictures, we had a short discussion about what it's supposed to be; answer? 5" wide.

I charge only a little more if I'm doing design work, as long as one understands my schedule.

Anyway, I fixed it last night and cut and bent it just now.













For fixing it and not charging you, you'll be happy that it's within 2 thousandths of an inch, and thank me for it too

 

[Old Man Roger]

4.9980 I told you I wanted it to be 5 inches. It’s getting to be impossible to find quality work anymore but I guess it’ll do.

 

[KwikFab]

4.9980 I told you I wanted it to be 5 inches. It’s getting to be impossible to find quality work anymore but I guess it’ll do.

 

[Wrench97]

4.9980 I told you I wanted it to be 5 inches. It’s getting to be impossible to find quality work anymore but I guess it’ll do.

But I wanted 5" inside.......

 

[KwikFab]

But I wanted 5" inside.......

 

[Old Man Roger]

Hold on! Ahh ****!

 

[SilverJimmy]

Such a considerate guy to leave him room for paint….

 

[KwikFab]

From time to time, I'll do something completely free.

I may add a stipulation here and there, but one that I find extremely reasonable considering my offer.

A guy in a FB group mentioned something about a bumper he made and asked for some constructive criticism. I simply suggested something like cutting his truck bedside or something to provide functionality as he had made his own "high clearance rear bumper".

To me, this is high clearance as shown on my own truck. For those unaware of the factory setup, my bedside is cut off here so that the bumper mounts high up giving me a huge departure angle.



Anyway, since he opted to keep it intact, he was left with a void between the bed side and the area below his tail light.

A company that basically has an F rating with the BBB, has their site down as they're trying to catch up on orders and not go under, so they are unavailable to sell/offer a cap that fills that void.

I told the guy to simply make a cap, since he's a welder but if he needed help I'd be happy to help as needed.

Long story short just make me cardboard cutouts for what you need, scan them, and I'll make the parts for ya for free.

Turned to receiving crudely taken pictures of a tape measure against his truck, to geometries that don't even work

I decided to mock up for myself what he told me is "exactly what I needed".





I'm just like..



Quick mock in CAD.



And the physical part cut and bent just now.



Asked him to just confirm the right edge (passenger side) angle and I'll edit as needed and it's all done!

 

[Old Man Roger]

Thanos made me really laugh out loud.

 

[KwikFab]

Thanos made me really laugh out loud.

Ah I see you're man of culture!

 

[Old Man Roger]

Ah I see you're a sci fi geek.

Ya.lol

 

[slim_grim]

Such a fun thread. I'm envious of the CNC plasma and press brake. Excellent stuff.

 

[WisJim]

Y'all are always welcome to donate if you want to help him reach 1,000 cars

He's about 350 cars short of it...

My grandson is now 10, and has also been accumulating Hot Wheels since he was a toddler. A couple of years ago he decided he wanted cars in unopened packages and now has perhaps 800 unopened vehicles plus many hundreds that have been played with. He has also learned how to put them on a spreadsheet that we can access so we can see what cars he already has, in case we come across something interesting. I can see many years of Hot Wheels in your son's future.

 

[16again]

I often forget I have a thread here

Another personalized item I cut, welded, and painted was for a member here per special request.



Painting is not my forte, but I did my best to make it look as best as I could. The insert was custom made for me per special request as I needed a custom water vessel for holding water.

Almost 1 full year later, still looks great.
This is 5:30 this morning during my weekly Sunday morning visit.

 

[KwikFab]

Almost 1 full year later, still looks great.
This is 5:30 this morning during my weekly Sunday morning visit.

Love knowing it's still there; glad you're able to keep flowers up for her.

 

[KwikFab]

Started early yesterday with cutting out some parts. Y'all have seen these before as I make them often enough.





Cutting out +6 orders though really gets the air compressor pretty hot, not to mention the water in the CNC table.





I didn't mention it here but two days ago, I had a bit of a fiasco trying to calibrate my backgauge in preparation for yesterdays bending. The end result was binding on one of the leadnuts on the X-axis because the fingers would not end up in the same place no matter how many times I calibrated and moved things.

Anyway, glad it was good to go by yesterday.







With most things cut, I ended the day with the intent to weld everything up today along with cutting a revision of a bracket I made recently.













With that out of the way, I opted to cut an additional order of those truck parts just to post up for sale since they go so fast and that's when I ran into an issue.

Continued on next post (picture limit).

 

[KwikFab]

While I don't use the backgauge for most things I bend, I do when it's a short production of parts I often make since I have it programmed. Well, firing up the brake today the backgauge showed NO CONNECTION.

I didn't notice this immediately as I Homed the machine the moment I turned it in, followed by going through my Run Programs only to see I wasn't allowed to run it. I cycled through different programs and some lit up while others didn't until I noticed a trend - those with backgauge parameters were unavailable.

No biggie, let's see if I can manually move the backgauge and that's when I noticed the NO CONNECTION up top.



For the next 40 minutes I was dicking around undoing every plug in the back and connecting everything again. Doing a full powering down and letting power drain before firing it up. Grabbing the backgauge leadscrews by hand and trying to turn them, which would tell me if they were energized or not (they were).

Went in and popped off the top, something I didn't want to deal with, and saw that -

The backgauge controller was indeed powered



The drivers were also receiving power





And all the power, ground, and signal wires were fully seated and fastened





I mean, no one touches this machine much less goes into the garage so I couldn't understand why the hell it wasn't showing. That's when I decided to knock out the set by lining things up manually, something I was already used to doing.

After bending those parts, I noticed the backgauge was suddenly available again

I'll have to call Langmuir and let them know the troubleshooting I did, and see if it's a sign of failure with the backgauge controller or something cause man that wasted a **** ton of time.

It was already hot, and with a late start I opted to only weld up 2/3 of the orders today.



All that's left are for these brackets to get nuts welded on for a total of 36 nuts.





What I didn't mention is that a cat had been wandering by the driveway (between houses) the past few days. I noticed it was a bit on the skinny side so I had got some food in case I saw it today.

It did eventually come by and happily took to the food I left.



Definitely a stray though as it's extremely skiddish. Still, was nice having a friend for a short bit before it took off again.



Anyway, time to turn in for the day and just relax.

Grocery shopping was done already, and the kiddo got his pictures taken since we just got his soccer uniform yesterday. Then back to normal routine with him going back to school tomorrow.

 

[16again]

Love knowing it's still there; glad you're able to keep flowers up for her.

Flowers are there each week not only because I love her, but because of your big heart.
Can’t thank you enough.

 

[rharman]

You do know that you now have a cat, right? You fed it, he/she is yours. That's the law - cat law.

 

[PugetDude]

You do know that you now have a cat, right? You fed it, he/she is yours. That's the law - cat law.

Just name it George...

 

[KwikFab]

You do know that you now have a cat, right? You fed it, he/she is yours. That's the law - cat law.

Naaaaw, definitely a stray!

It wanted nothing to do with me, but was trusting enough to eat as close to me as it did probably because it was starving.

If it does linger more often, I'll keep it fed. Any recommendations on an outdoor shelter, in the event that it needs one to stave off the heat?