Using a Custom Dovetail Fixture to Mill a Motorcycle Spark Arrestor

With a 26 year career as a General Machinist at Boeing, Kevin Bethards knows a thing or two about CNC. Owner of a PCNC 770 with a 4th Axis, Bethards has a small home machine shop where, using a custom dovetail fixture for his 4th Axis, Bethards milled a spark arrestor for a YZ250F motorcycle. “I came up with the idea for the dovetail fixture based on something we use at work, but I just scaled it down a bit.

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Making of a Maker: Kent Myers on PCNC

IT Program Manager by day, maker by night, Kent Myers writes extensively about his interests and innovations on his popular blog, KentMyers.net. “I’m a computer network manager with a mechanical engineering degree that I never really used. I’ve always liked to build and create things, but in my day job I mostly sit at a computer. So, I started getting into woodworking and have done a lot of projects in the past 20 years. If you’ve been to my website you can see some of the work I’ve done,” Myers explained.

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Powered ParaChutes for Recreational Flying Enthusiasts

When airplane mechanic and longtime recreational flying enthusiast Ken Bricker took over the helm of Summit Aerosports Inc. two years ago, he made a commitment to continue manufacturing the safest and most durable Powered ParaChute (PPC) airframes on the market. A former PPC distributor, Bricker immediately began researching how to modernize Summit’s manufacturing capabilities with a small CNC machine.

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Howell V-4 IC Engine

After retiring in from a career as an electrical engineering, Terry Mayhugh of Round Rock, Texas set up shop in his backyard, “I took early retirement back in 2003 and built a shop in my backyard to do consulting work for a single customer that needed both electronic and mechanical design help. I purchased my Tormach 1100 PCNC mill, SolidWorks, and SprutCAM back in the summer of 2006 when some of my mechanical designs became too complicated to prototype on my manual equipment. Local machine shops had little interest in getting involved because nearly everything I was doing were one-offs, and I needed quick prototype turn arounds.”

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Shifting a Hobby into High Gear

Tormach customer turned Tormach employee, Rory DesJardin was a three-year PCNC 1100 user before he joined Tormach as a Product Developer and Technical Support Specialist in January of this year. DesJardin used his PCNC 1100 to make shifter controllers and shifters for Jeep and Toyota automatic transmissions and Toyota transfer cases as a side business.

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Motorcycle Gear: Custom License Plate Bracket

Mechanical engineer by trade, Max Jensen used his personal PCNC 1100 to make a custom license plate bracket for a Suzuki GSXR600 motorcycle.

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