I had some leftover acrylic from last semester, which was pretty easy to turn into a nice square piece for the Bantam mill for this week’s assignment.
After an extremely helpful meeting with Ben in the afternoon, I was ready to cut and engrave this small piece into a simple part using the Bantam mill. I figured the simplest thing I could do with my 3”x3” piece would be to cut a circle, with one smaller circle engraved in the center to act as a hub, and one set off-center where a crank or something could be inserted.
And once those two SVG pieces were loaded into the Bantam program, there wasn’t a whole lot left to do but let the mill run.
I let the machine engrave the smaller two holes first then I had it cut out the larger piece.
When the machine was finished, I pried the piece up off of the bed, and took a look.
A small film of plastic was left over on the edge from where the machine didn’t quite cut through, but that smoothed out pretty easily with a little bit of sandpaper on the corner.
It’s not the most practical piece in the world, but I feel comfortable with the Bantam mill now, and I’m excited to start thinking about how to use this process for more complex projects.