Kayak designer and builder and Steve Ree (
www.seawardkayaks.com) has just used
Cut3D to machine a 19.5 foot long, 16 inch tall, 32 inch wide kayak plug (model for making the master mold) on his converted 20ft long with a 22inch Z plunge ShopBot router.
The Kayak was modelled in Rhino3D and he initially planned to use the 3D Slicing in
Cut3D to make separate sections and assemble them to produce the master model. But he managed to machine the complete model in one go using the Z level roughing and raster finishing toolpath strategies.
The plug was machined from SM Foam using a 1/2 inch diameter by 6" long 4 flute bull nose bit running at 10000 rpm. It only took 21 hours to make verses about 200 hours by hand and it worked perfectly!
Steve commented "I can't stress enough how much time and money was saved opening up a 3D DXF file and letting Vectric's Cut3D calculate the roughing and finishing tool paths has saved us!"
"A huge applause and sincere thank-you go out to the team at Vectric for the ability to make this happen at an affordable price. Thank you."
Tony