SkillsUSA 2009 CNC Mill National Competition 2nd place - Robb Simpson (LWTC, Washington)

First, a shoutout to:
Tom Clemans, Machine Technology instructor at Sno Isle. He helped prepare me for this competition, and as such, helped me win my Silver medal!
Mike Clifton, Machine Technology instructor at LWTC. This guy is the one who taught me almost everything I know about Machining, and it was he who got me into the field in the first place. He's also a darn good teacher!
Bob Monroig, Harley repair instructor at LWTC. He spearheaded the whole SkillsUSA competitions at LWTC, and without him, I wouldn't even have been involved with this competition at all.

Thank you all!
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This is a video(given to me by http://www.youtube.com/user/tomclemans Tom Clemans ) showing me competing.
In the SkillsUSA CNC Mill contest, contestants use a CNC Mill to make a part after being given a print. Contestants have a total of 6 hours - two hours to get used to the machine, and four hours to program and build the part.
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When I did this competition, I had a fair bit of trouble. First, we were given a pretty small and light machine, as CNC Mills go - almost a toy. And the cutter I was given... a 2"-long 1/4" 2fl HSS endmill... Way too long. It was chattering the entire time.
Second, my print(as you will see early on in the video) was pretty odd - Not a standard US drawing, but a metric drawing, using first-angle projection(which I had never heard of at the time).
I was able to make out only one part of the print, which was the pocket at the bottom. I programmed that, and ran it - I only programmed one copy of the profile, and then ran it multiple times, adjusting my G54 Z offset so I could take a limited amount of material at a time.
I also had my feed way down, and you can see me tweaking the feedrate on-the-fly.

Near the end, I made a mistake: After taking one pass all the way around, I was left with some material sticking up where my cutter had not been. Being smart, I figured I'd just use MDI to feed down to my Z-depth, then manually jog the machine around and remove the material.
Great, it ought to work. Unfortunately, I put in the wrong offset number, and ended up making a 1/8th inch groove in the bottom of my pocket.

Still, I didn't do badly for having screwed up, and it was fun.

(Plus, the amount of free stuff I got from vendors when I -wasn't- competing was amazing - I ended up with around 12 free T-shirts!)

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• LWTC
• Machining
• CNC
• Mill
• Milling
• TomClemans
• SkillsUSA
• Nationals
• Competition
• HD
• Highschool
• Secondary
• 2009
• Silver
• Second
• Robb
• Robbie
• Macrobb
• Simpson

[Seaner86]

What was the machine called?

[MacRobbSimpson]

@Seaner86: Its an Emco-Meyers CNC mill.

Unfortunately, I don't know what model - I can't even find Emco's website!

[TheBadAudio]

@MacRobbSimpson

try it here emco-world(.)com/

[tomclemans]

Good job Robbie!!! I'm proud of you! One or more of my students will be competing in the contest this year, so I'll be working with them now.

Good luck, you'll need it. ;-D