Flip jig success

Finally got my flip jig squared away and now the nomad is ready for production!!

1911 grips was the first hurdle
Designed in solidworks
Meshcam to g code and… grrrr troublesome.

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Adam! Your not supposed to cut those grips while they’re still on the gun! :smiley:

That looks like a winner for you. You must have a laser somewhere, too. :smiley:

1 Like

FWIW I’ve recently been taking another approach to flipping parts:

  • Bore 5.8mm holes in a large piece of stock using a ~1/8" endmill, to match the 6mm locating features on the bed
  • Ream the hole to 6mm
  • Use the locating holes and a dowel pin to locate the stock on the bed
  • Fix the stock (e.g. tape and superglue or with a fastener)
  • Machine the part, leave some tabs
  • Flip the stock
  • Machine the other side
  • Cut the tabs, file what remains

Some nice consequences:

  • You can plonk down a piece of stock just about the same size as your bed and machine the whole thing at once. In your case it looks like that would mean ~5 or 6 grips in one setup.
  • Since the stock is already located, you don’t need to bother with homing on X or Y.
  • If you buy stock with a decent thickness tolerance, no need to home on Z either (or you can home to the bed).
  • If you can leave the locating features in place while you’re machining, they can keep your work rigid.

One potential improvement I picked up from NYC CNC is to use hot glue to fix the part in place after machining so that you can machine away the tabs.

2 Likes

Nice. Is that blue grip a Valkyrie Dynamics?

If you want to mess with textures, gunsmith Ned Christiansen has something called conamyids (cones + pyramids) that I saw years ago:

conamyds_texture

I love your Idea, on the same level I was thinking!

Yessir valkyrie in g10. Doing hexagons tomm when I get home. I edited a file a found with blender (crossing fingers) and hoping to fully customize 3 sets to get actual production flowing. There is a decent market at my work