Mounting Plates

This project was to take 1/8″ thick sheets of low carbon steel and machine them down to 27.25″ x 23.75″ . These plates then needed to have notches cut out of them and several holes drilled into them so that bolts could be placed through them. These plates were originally cut out of larger sheets using a vertical band saw and were then taken down to size using a manual mill.

Once they were sized, I moved them to a CNC mill where I was able to program in the various tools I would need and the locations of all of the holes. The sheets were milled in three separate stages: the left, the right, and the middle. In order to use the program I needed to create a setup that would allow me to consistently relocate the edges of the part. In order to ensure that all of the holes were in the correct locations, this was done by drilling in two holes for dowel pins that would create a straight edge for the plates to rest against. After the setup was ready, the plates were finished; this involved using three different drill sizes as well as two sizes of end mills to cut out the square windows.

This project helped me practice my skills with using CNC machines, especially since I was using conversational programming rather than typical G and M-codes.