In the spring of 2006, when Doug Posich launched 5th Axis, Inc. (Stonington, CT), he wanted to take on a demonstration project that would highlight his job shop’s agile prototyping and manufacturing capabilities. The company is just up the road from defense contractor Electric Boat, a highly prized prospective customer; so he reasoned that something nautical would be in order.
Standing around a white board one evening in May, he and his two employees brainstormed a new kind of kayak with extendable pontoons that would make it stable enough to stand up and fish. The race was on.
Doug surfed the Internet comparing various kayak designs. Because of their inherent stability and hauling capacity, he chose a sea kayak as the model for his hull lines. He relied heavily on previous experience designing surfboards and snowboards to arrive at an optimal combination of buoyancy, handling and stability.
It took him about 16 hours to transform hand sketches into a Solid Works design. Then he flowed the CAD model into Mastercam X where he created the tool paths for the prototype, which would be cut from industrial foam. Poscich had extensive experience with older versions of Mastercam, but had never used Mastercam X. However, after a day’s training at his nearby distributor, he was ready to go and never looked back.
Doug said that Mastercam X represents a major departure from earlier releases in that all of the product features and functions are made available in customizable dropdown menus and icon palettes that can be set up close at hand on the desktop. Some of the features he found most useful for this project included include:
- Breaking up surfaces into smaller user-definable sections to obtain more control over the tool path.
- Color coding-- one of the fastest ways to assign specific toolpaths to different areas on the part.
- Mirror imaging to instantly replicate complex symmetrical tool paths.
- Verification and backplotting—powerful visual tools for verifying tool paths to eliminate scrape and prevent tool and head crashes. (Doug also uses backplotting to estimate how long it will take to manufacture the part.)
During the second week, 5th Axis went to work cutting the foam plug for the kayak’s hull. This included plunging in deep to cut the boat’s cockpit. These cutting actions, which relied heavily on Mastercam’s versatility in manipulating the router head position, eliminated a great deal of manual sculpting. Cutting the plug for the hull and the pontoons required about 16 hours of machine time interspersed with other work.
While this was going on, Poscich was back on SolidWorks designing the retractable pontoon arm and lever mechanism. This happened over a week and a half. Out in the shop, the staff was covering the hull with a thin layer of fiberglass. Then they installed the lever and arm mechanism with the pontoons and made some refinements to this mechanical design.
The art to part cycle that began on May 24 was completed on June 26 when Doug and fellow employees trucked the prototype down to the water and had some fun. The kayak project did, indeed, demonstrate the firm’s versatile manufacturing capabilities, and the customized workflow processes that Poscich set up within Mastercam are now being used routinely.
While the kayak project was underway, a considerable amount of work had already begun to flow in from in from paying customers. What’s more, Doug showed the kayak design to a local distributor who not only liked it --a lot-- but also wanted to sell it.
The Trifly™ Kayak ( www.triflykayak.com ) is now patent-pending with several models in various stages of design and manufacturing process development. In a very short time Doug Poscich’s creativity and agile CNC manufacturing technology has taken him from launching a start-up to managing two very distinct businesses.
Unexpected Consequences
The new Tri-Fly Kayak was so well received that another company is being launched to manufacture and market the product.
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