On Saturday March 1,2008 we held our 5th annual Southern California Camp at the shop of Ilan Dei. This one turned out to be our largest SoCal Camp to date, and we had an equal mix of experienced Shopbotters, and first timers.
Ilan’s shop is always an interesting place to visit due to the nature of his business. Instead of being a “production shop” Ilan’s main focus is creating deigns, building prototypes, and then licensing said designs. This means that at any given time you can see a number of projects being worked on at varying stages of completion ( see picture above of a finished cabinet with some ‘experimental’ door pulls….).
Another feature of the SoCal Camp each year is the variety of Show and Tell work which comes in for display, and this year was no different. We had a good sampling of jigs, and tooling, and materials, and products.
Gabriel McKeagney did another presentation this year, and he expanded on his theme of last year by showing ways to use “2D”cuts to gain “3D” effects. As usual he brought along some of the beautiful carved pieces which he has become noted for…
Tom Sansoterra showed off a combination “cold air gun/dust collection foot” attachment which he built for his machine.
Robert Chubb explained some software that he is writing to facilitate doing 3D and boat designs, and he explained how he cuts hollowed out ellipses using tricks from the wood turning guys.
Mark Martinez brought in some aluminum pieces he is cutting for the automotive industry.
Roger Kirkpatrick brought in some beautiful moldings.
Al Ching brought in some canoe paddles he is building with the collaboration of other Shopbotters ( Al has a unique setup in that he designs his work in California, but his shop is in Wisconsin….).
Phil Mulligan showed off some dovetailed plywood boxes he produces for the film industry.
And we had a couple of guests who explained a program they are working on to generate “traced” vector lines from scanned images ( still not completed, but we will be kept informed..).
In addition to the above we covered many of what are now “standard”topics at all of the Camps; vacuum hold downs, 3D carving/coatings, software options, sign making, etc. etc. And because of the diverse nature of the group, we had some good feedback in each area.
You can see pictures of the Camp on our “Flickr”Camp Shopbot page- http://www.flickr.com/photos/campshopbot/
Thanks again to Ilan for hosting this one !
Leave a Reply