Unsheathing the Sabre....

The FIRST Robotics team has come a long way since its inception in the fall of 2015.  We used to build things out of steel tubing and with only a little planning.  Now its aluminum and various plastics, and almost everything is done in CAD design before the tools are picked up.  But a good design that still depends on hand measuring and cutting is still imprecise.  To take it to the next level you need some form of CNC equipment.

In recent seasons we've outsourced some work.  A combination of milling, laser cutting, water jet cutting.  But there are obvious advantages to doing things "in house".  When speed of prototyping is the key to success you want to be able to design, fabricate, test and revise in a matter of hours.  You don't have days.

For that a CNC router is the best tool.  And while most FIRST teams make do with more humble desktop units, we took a different path.

A big truck shows up....

The contents are substantial enough that a fork lift and a crew of helpful guys are called for:

And here we have it installed.  It's a ShopSabre 23.

The first thing you have to do is put what is called a "waste board" onto the working surface and plane off the surface to be level to an insane degree of precision.  We were surprised, happily surprised, to see how fast it screams through wood.

Of course we'll usually be working in aluminum and polycarb once we learn a bit on cheaper and more forgiving materials.

Nah, lets just go straight to aluminum.  This is 1/8 thickness and the router goes through it like butter.