On April 10, 2014 at 15:29, Ernie Gilman said...
This is all true. It just requires either planning your scheduling, purchasing, and record-keeping desk so that you have space to do drawings at the drop of a hat, or a totally different drafting board, even if small.
The last few times, I have sketched something out and discussed it briefly with the sheet metal guy who's making it. That has the added benefit that we find here when we ask how to do something before we've decided on some nutcase approach: the sheet metal guy can point out simpler ways to accomplish the same thing.
Mostly the time, in my case.
Good idea. I'll ask a couple.
I started to take drafting classes in 8th Grade, took full-year drafting classes through high school and went on to study architecture before deciding that I didn't want to be an architect. One full quarter in HS was devoted to pattern development, including patterns for anything that starts as flat stock and could have taken any form after it was shaped, including simple curves, cylinders & cones (whole, or truncated at various angles), polygons and combinations of these.
I bought a drafting machine on ebay a few years ago and once I finish setting it up, it's gonna be great. I have a drawing table with a fixed top, but I plan to make it adjustable & larger, so I can use 24" x36" paper/vellum. I have seen boards and machines online for great prices, but I wouldn't bother with a lot of the new stuff- it's flimsy, I doubt it's accurate and it would be a waste of time and money. We used Keuffel & Esser drafting machines when I was in high school and they were very good.
You comment about working with a sheet metal guy made me laugh- I did a sketch for a sheet metal shop last Summer and the piece they made was nothing like what I drew. The funniest part is that I offered to make one from a piece of paper while I was in their office and the guy said it wasn't necessary.
What I wanted from this shop was a back splash that's about 10' long- it consists of one piece that's 10' long, 2-5/8" wide with a 15° bend at 1/2" and a complementary bend at 2-1/8", so this part is parallel to the 1/2" area, which would be used to screw the back splash to the wall. The 15° angle is to shed water and the bottom would have i]laid flat on the 2x4 and screwed down. The end cap was supposed to fit under the back splash and the 2x4 would have been notched to accept this.
I DREW THE EXACT SHAPE OF THE END CAP AND THE BACK SPLASH. What they sent was a 10' long piece, bent 1" from each edge, at 90° and a little rectangular piece that was about 1/2" x 3" with little tabs that were bent at 90°.
A lot of sheet metal guys are great at communicating and understanding the concepts presented to them and that saves a lot of time. Some cabinetmakers are similar and will actually offer to do things like make shelves with slots, for cooling, cutouts for more than one speaker wire at the back, know that we need more than the width, depth and height of the equipment to put this stuff in the cabinet and that it needs to cool when it's operating. Some don't know and don't seem to care.
