Mid West Camp Shopbot 2007

Molly-Booth
This is the sixth year we have run a Camp at John Forney’s shop in Edison,Ohio and it turned out to be his largest event to date.
Things kicked off on Thursday with a full day of software training by the staff of Vectric, Tony McKenzie, and Brian Moran. Tony spent much of the day covering the tools in V Carve Pro, and Cut 3D, while Brian answered technical questions about future versions of the software.
One of the reasons this session was held was to make the “formal”announcement of a combined venture between Shopbot and Vectric which will result in new machine buyers getting a copy of a new software package called “Partworks”which Vectric has created specifically for Shopbot. It will combine V Carve Pro AND Cut3d, so all new users will have the latest versions of both packages.
The Friday sessions began with a talk about designing and using various vacuum systems for a variety of different applications.
Then a rep from a solid surface company came in to explain the variety of products they sold, and why people might want to use them.
There was also a rep from an abrasives company which went through the range of sanding tools and papers that might be useful for a lot of the work ‘Botters do.
Haze Avery (Mid West Rapid Tooling) then showed off his new creation- a tool changer for Porter Cable routers which will allow the use of 8 different router bits in a single file. He gave a talk, and a demo of the tool in action. There are pictures of this tool ( as well as much of the Camp “action”) on the Shopbot Flickr page;
http://www.flickr.com/photos/campshopbot
Harold Weber did a demonstration to show how he creates 3D objects from 2D files with “Rhino” software.
Ryan Patterson walked us through the process of creating cabinet parts, and cutting files in his software; Cabinet Parts Pro
James Booth explained why people should consider using “3D clipart”and custom design services in their shop projects (he also brought along the youngest Camper to date-his daughter Molly (1year old) pictured above)…
On Saturday Ted Hall showed off the new “Buddy” bench top model Shopbot, and explained some new upcoming developments at Shopbot, including some of the “upgrade paths” available for both software, and hardware.
Tiffany Rochileau from Delcam went over the use of Artcam software to create 2D , and 3D files.
We had a good Show and tell session where some people brought along samples of their work, and others stood up to explain how they used the tool in their business.
After lunch John and Haze ran the tool changer, and Ryan Patterson ran the bench top machine with the new “Powerstick”option that allows people to run much longer pieces of material than ever before on a tool of this size.
Bill Jarvis wrapped the sessions up with a talk and demonstration of the “Next Engine”3D scanner, and he showed us how to create cutting files from the resultant scans.
In addition to all the sessions going on there was a LOT of interaction from the people attending, and we’re hoping some of this may lead to possible future “User groups”
in the area.
And as a bonus, John had again arranged to have some local Amish women bake a variety of cakes, pies, cookies, cinnamon rolls ,etc., so combined with the pizza lunches everyone left Edison full of information (and pastries…).

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