Online Store Opened

Well, after years of wanting to open an online store to sell some of our most popular models, we've finaly done just that.

Today, we finally got our online store running at Extreme Scale with some of our smaller satellite models and a wind generator model that has been very popular lately.

The goal of this store will be to list some of the high-quality products we can make in bulk (5 or more at a time) to sell at inexpensive prices to collectors, as corporate give-aways, for retirement gifts, etc. As the store gets larger, we hope to add models created by other companies that will enhance our selection and give our customers more choices.

This also gives us another advertising outlet to show off our custom scale model company, A&M Model Makers.

I learned quite a bit with this job. With the amount of time I spent on this job, we should have charge two to three times as much... you can't charge people to learn new things, though.

Anyway, this is scale model of a spinal implant blown up 10x so it can be used at trade shows. The top (metallic blue) of this model was made on our CNC mill from 3D CAD geometry as a single piece. The bottom was cut first and then flipped and located so we could cut the other side. The bottom (white/beige) oval part was made on our CNC mill and glued together to make a single piece.

The most exciting part about this job was the screws. These were made using our brand spankin' new 4th axis for our CNC mill. Since I had never done anything using a 4th axis, this took some figuring out. The end result was spectacular, though so it was all worth the effort.

This model turned out much better than I expected! The console shape was drawn in 3D CAD software and then cut on our CNC mill in tooling board. The instrument panel was made from white ABS plastic painted black and then laser cut and engraved -- this process removes the black paint and lets the white plastic show through -- a very cool effect. The instruments are color laser printed on glossy paper and then set behind the laser engraved panels which amazingly, gives it the effect of actually being back lit.

The control stick in this image was made from geometry purchase (for $9.95) at a site that sells meshes. It was a complete joystick that we modified to look more similar to (although not an exact replica) the helicopter we were modeling.

27mm Mauser Cannon

This is not a great picture, but you can see the 27mm Mauser Cannon sticking out of the front of this pod. My company built this full size model for display at the Paris Air Show where it was displayed outside next to the US military jets.