2.008 Paperweight


September 2014 – October 2014

2.008 – Design and Manufacturing II

2.008 is the intro level manufacturing class at MIT for mechanical engineering students. In the class, students learn about various manufacturing topics including: design for manufacturing, CNC machining, injection molding, thermoforming, metal forming, metal casting, and 3D printing. One of the first assignments in the class is to design and manufacture an aluminium paperweight out of a solid stock. To manufacture the paperweight, students need to generate CAM code using Mastercam. Below you can information on the paperweight I made with my friend Amy.

Process Plan

Lathe:
We used the lathe to face our part, starting off with a clean, nice part that we could then continue to operate on. The facing operation also took care of the details on the edge at the same time. The only other feature in our design that involved lathe work was the groove, which is very small and therefore needed a small and pointy tool.

Mill:
We decided not to re-face because we had completed that process on the lathe. We began by removing the bulk of material around our embossed “MIT” with the ½” end mill. After removing the bulk of material, we went around the “MIT” shape with the 1/8” end mill, which was perfect for removing the remaining material between the gaps and the edges. We specifically made the gaps between the letters more than 0.125" wide so that the 1/8” end mill could fit and we wouldn't have to use a smaller tool, which would take longer.
After making the pocket around the “MIT”, we followed the contour of our sketched gears and “2.008” to finish our paperweight. We began with the largest tools possible that would fit, stepping the size down to 1/32” in order to get the finest details, as our design had narrow regions. In this way, we saved time but were also able to get the refined details.