One of the things I say frequently enough to make my wife roll her eyes is that it’s good to have the right tools for a job. Yes, I can do things without the correct tools, well, some of the time, but other times I can not.
Take this beastie, for example. It’s the winding head of a rope maker Under normal circumstances not only would I have not made this, but I would not even thought about making one. My carpentry skills are just not good enough to make the gears.
However, I have a CNC Router and I started doing mechanical drawings back in Grammar School, although back then it was called Technical Drawing or TD for short. I’ve been using CAD drawing packages pretty much since they first came out for personal computers. So it was an easy job to draw up the plans for one, use a CAM package to create the g-code for the CNC Router and away I went.
Well, the same thing happened to me again whilst I was trying to replace the bulb in the port side nav light.
This light had a gasket, unlike the starboard one which had sealant, and the observant among you may have noticed that this has been cut out of a bicycle inner tube. A pretty good idea, but rough. Not that I could do any better with a sharp knife and a pair of scissors, I hasten to add, but I also have a Laser Engraver/Cutter and figured that using this I could do much better.
I took off the light housing, drew around it on a sheet of paper, photographed it and loaded the image into my CAD program. Using the various drawing tools I created the drawing.
This was exported to the CAM software and thence to the laser cutter. I used a piece of thin plywood to cut out a test piece as the gasket material I ordered will not arrive until tomorrow.
This is the first attempt which is pretty close. The outer edge, the holes and the two vertical straight line are spot on, but the thickness of the upper and lower parts are too thin. Looking back at my measurement I noticed that I’d messed them up.
After revising the drawing this was the second test piece.
This one fits perfectly. When the neoprene arrives I’ll be able to cut out two gaskets for the nav lights that I know will fit and the really good thing is that if I ever need to replace them, I already have the drawing, ready to go and tested.
Time for a cup of tea.