On April 10, 2014 at 18:00, highfigh said...
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.
Very Very Cool.
I bought a drafting machine on ebay a few years ago and once I finish setting it up, it's gonna be great.
I'm assuming you write this with the humor it deserves. This pretty much expresses what I did.
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.
Did you talk with him about it? Better, did he show any interest in it? I got lucky by finding a sheet metal shop connected to a hardware store, and at least one guy there who was interested in custom stuff unrelated to the normal sheet metal work.
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°.
What they sent?
This is custom and maybe it would have gone better all in person.
Your description above doesn't state the angle of the second bend, but leaves "complementary" to the intelligence of the bender. The picture should have done it, but it often doesn't!
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.
And sometimes we end up with something unusable.
