Art Building Woodshop Upgrade
Art
Requested:
$7,462
Status:
Accepted
Awarded:
$8,209
Abstract
The School of Art+Art History+Design woodshop supports students in the Art and Design divisions in processing materials to meet their program goals. Industrial Design students use the woodshop to process a broad range of different materials in their iterative design processes. One material in particular presents some challenges to the traditional woodshop range of tools. Urethane and polyurethane high density foam (often referred to as tooling board or the brand name Renshape) is becoming the material of choice for student work prototyping. While the tablesaw and the bandsaw have no trouble cutting and shaping tooling board the high speed steel knives of the jointer and the planer are quickly dulled by the abrasive, dense qualities of these foams. There exists a new design of cutting head for jointers and planers that greatly increases the utility of these machines to surface a variety of materials while upgrading the surface quality and precision of the work. Instead of a series of 3 straight knives on a planer or jointer the new design uses segmented carbide cutters arrayed in a spiral or helix pattern around the cutterhead. The carbide is much more resistant to the dulling quality of the abrasive tooling board. Being able to use the jointer and the planer to prepare the tooling board will upgrade student work quality and facilitate a faster process to prepare a blank for the CNC mill. Additional benefits are a safer shop environment through reduced machine noise and reduced mess through smaller chip size.
