Mold Machining: Day 1

This past Thursday was extremely eventful for the team! We started making molds for some of our pieces and even accidentally broke some tool pieces along the way (okay, maybe three. . . ).

Elyud and Daivon preparing to mill one of their Ring piece molds.
Check out those safety glasses!

Here is a video Dave, our lab instructor, helped me take while using the lathe machine for the die of our Thermo-Window. We were able to capture some of the chip action!

An important thing the team learned before machining is that there is no reason a mold should only be made using just the milling or lathe machine. As it turns out, using both machines to create a mold makes the machining process so much faster and efficient. For example, for the thermoform 'window' mold of our yo-yo, the time to manufacture was reduced from an estimated time of 70 minutes to 12 minutes! It was originally going to be made using only the milling machine, but after checking the files with Dave, he suggested we use the lathe as well. 

Thermo-Window Die. Machined with the lathe and then the mill. 

Even though using both the lathe and the mill to machine the Thermo-Window die has many benefits, a minor issue I encountered was that it can be tricky to align the already lathed piece's surface for the milling machine. As can be seen in the picture above, the surface is not completely smooth around each island of the die even though all cuts were supposed to be made to the same depth. Although this does not seem to cause any immediate problem for us now, one way we could have fixed that was to zero the surface on the milling machine to account for the alterations caused by the lathe. 

Left: Elyud, Daivon, and I wait for our pieces to finish machining. Right: Adding pin holes to thermo-form die.

One of the molds for the Ring with a broken tool bit above it. . .

Super Happy Thuan with a finished Body mold. 

Some of our finished molds. Top and Bottom molds are for the cavity. Middle piece is the thermo-form die for the window piece. 

Apart from the issues we ran into with the mill, all in all, it was a very successful day. Our next steps: finish our molds and begin manufacturing yo-yo pieces!! Stay tuned!

You can take a look at the process plan for each mold and our estimated manufacturing time here.