Update 3/26

I've been working mainly in Edgecam for the last week or so whenever I can find free time in school to use the tech computers, since Edgecam costs upwards of $400 to license for a year. Most of the time I've been simply trying to figure out how to use it again, since I forgot how to use most of the features on it. After a couple of tries and a youtube tutorial video, I figured out how to click the manufacturing button on the toolbar to get myself started with milling operations. I did some really basic stuff with profiling the putter and that sort of thing. I've actually got some pictures to show too!

You can somewhat see the outline of the putter underneath all of the purple lines, but that's not really the point of this post to show the putter head. The purple lines are basically the path the mill head is supposed to follow in order to cut the main outline of the head. Each cut has to be shallow or else the risk of the mill head breaking or overheating becomes significantly higher, since it is metal cutting metal.

This would be what it looks like after the 3 profiling operations I implemented; each operation cut a different tier of the back of the putter. The reason it's not completely cut out of the metal, or the reason the metal around the head isn't all gone, is because 1) the surrounding metal is essentially scrap metal and there's no need to cut more than I need to, and 2) I'm still awful at using this program. However, being terrible at this and improperly using the profiling operation opened b=my eyes; the putter with the thicker back and curved cut-out looks much better than the original head, and so I've updated the original head to look more like it.

Also, the process of cutting this made me think about how exactly I'm going to mill the head, so I looked it up and found that cutting aluminum involves a lot of coolant; even more if the aluminum alloy has harder metals in it. And that made me look for different types of coolant to buy, since I don't know if the school 1) has enough coolant or 2) would be willing to let me use their coolant. The most recommended type of coolant that I found was Qualichem Q-cool 361 ($30/gal). I then couldn't find how much of it I would need, and then found even more about CNC milling aluminum WITHOUT coolant, so I'll be asking Mr. Breigle very soon about the coolant situation.

This week I'll be working more on Edgecam and my goal is to have a complete milled profile by next week.