quick update on the class:
teams have been productive, as the individuals have been pursuing their respective projects. we have allocated some time to demonstrations of skills such as bookmaking and binding, lazer-cutting, vinyl-cutting, printing, etc. today i briefly watched a demo on bookbinding, which was interesting to watch but i have already done it several times. more important was a demo on the milling machine on campus, and the processes of CAD (computer-aided design), CAM (computer-aided manufacturing), and CNC (computer numerical controlling) to be used in conjunction with the router.
there is much to say about the milling machine, but essentially it takes a sculpted, digital form produced through a software program, the CAD, loads the data set of its meshes and nurbs (essentially the x,y,z coordinates of the shapes) into a separate program, the CAM, which translates the data set into instructions along with your preferences into the machine, or CNC router, which cuts in a linear sequence which was specified. whats interesting is that the instructions sent to the CNC machine itself is a simple text document written in G-code, which is a basic set of xyz movements, positioned either absolutely from the origin point or from the point that it just cut to.
i was very interested in this process, as i think it will be very pertinent in the later half of the class, when i can develop my proposal for my project. an example of my proposal would be incredibly useful.
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