Torus Knot out of plaster
We had to make a knot out of plaster. the knot
didn't need to be anything special. So the first one I could think of was the
torusknot function in 3DsMax.
![toruskot rendering](../projects/torusknot/3dtknot2.jpg)
Well since you can't mill this shape directly with my machine, I had to decompose it into
simpler pieces that would also fit into the work area of my machine.
![3D piece to mill](../projects/torusknot/3dtknotmill.jpg)
![path generated.](../projects/torusknot/tknotmillpath.jpg)
The prepared pieces serve to generate a tooling path for the mill with is
shown above, done in egdecam, the easiest program to do this, I find. Below is
the verification of the tooling path.
![mill preview](../projects/torusknot/tknotmillpreview.jpg)
![freshley milled piece](../projects/torusknot/tknotmill.jpg)
this is what my machine milled. It wasn't set on very precise, because it is so slow,
so the whole operation took 7 hours, just to mill, and another 7-8 hours or so
until I had all the parameters and everything figured out, I'm just beginning.
Then I cut out the pieces and pasted them together and finished it to make the
negative mould below. So I just needed to pour in the plaster , make 4
identical pieces and paste them together.
![positive milled mould top](../projects/torusknot/tknotmold2.jpg)
![negative plastic mould](../projects/torusknot/tknotmoldpl.jpg)
![](../projects/torusknot/tknotfinish2.jpg)
And here is the final product, not bad hey.