2013 Southern California Camp Shopbot

Invalid Displayed Gallery

Gabe and Mike Pari have been pretty busy since we held our Camp at their “old” shop last year. They moved their business a few blocks away into a much larger building, and hired on more employees to help them keep up with their ongoing, and still growing business of building Teardrop trailers.

The first thing that greets you when you enter their industrial park is a small “fleet” of their beautiful trailers, in a variety of models. And the interior of their shop has even more chasis, and frames ready and waiting to be completed for delivery.

We had a good turnout of Campers again this year, with many people being at their first Camp. Lots of interest in the latest goings on, and some great show and tell stuff on display.

Many people came to learn about 3D designing, and cutting. This led to discussions about how to utilize 3D files to make molds, and a variety of products. That led right into some of the latest coating and finishing techniques.

We then got into the idea of using vacuum to hold down different materials, and the construction of vacuum tables.

Then Randy Johnson addressed questions about techniques for finishing projects built of wood, including some ways to color, and seal different species.

Right after lunch we went into the Show and Tell sessions and there were some great projects on display.

Sterling Ashman showed off some beautifully carved plaques.

Gillian Kelleher brought in some gears she had cut out of wood and UHMW

Ross Mitchell showed us a couple of games he taught his students to design and cut on their school Shopbot.

Jerry Wilson had a very nicely carved “map” of Southern California where he used both the ‘Bot for 3D work, and then added laser cut lines for the highways. He also had a very clever “picture hanger” he designed which lets you hang a picture exactly where you really want it to be.

Chris Schaie had his latest mechanical marvel- a twelve legged aluminum robot which “walked “ in circles for everyone. And then he showed us a bowl he carved out of laminated sections of bamboo plywood

Sue Piper showed us some of the beautiful carving and artwork she and Ross do with their  miniature buildings cut from Precision Board

Gabe Pari explained how he’s been cutting aluminum parts for his trailers on his machine.

And then Randy Johnson gave  a talk on some of the latest developments going on in Durham including a preview of the “HandiBot”. Randy then showed a number of projects he completed while working at American Woodworker magazine and he explained some of the techniques used to create them. He brought along a number of samples to illustrate these techniques, and then he closed out the day with a short session on using Partworks and Aspire to achieve specific effects.

There was so much interest in all of this that we ran over our normal time frame until 5 PM !

Thanks again to Gabe and Mike for being such great hosts !

Leave a Reply

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

  

  

  

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.