Critical Making Studio
Looking Outwards [3]
CNC Milled Products
Prompt: Identify a 2–3 examples of products that make use of CNC milling in the process of creating the product. Look closely at the product and the specific production processes involved.
Looking at Apple Mac Pro 2019 (a fancy cheese grater)
More air than metal.
The lattice pattern machined into the aluminum has many advantages. It more than doubles the surface area exposed to air, facilitating additional airflow and acting as a heat sink. This allows for fast and quiet cooling, enabling Pro Display XDR to sustain an extreme level of brightness indefinitely. Inlet and exhaust vents work through this pattern to draw in cool air and eject hot air away from the system, limiting the potential for hot air to be reingested.
- How is CNC milling used?
An array of hexagonally tessellated spheres are carved from one side of the aluminum slab and another offset array is carved from the other. I was unable to find exact information on how Apple machines the units but several people have hacked their own versions.
- Would the product design be possible without CNC milling?
Possibly but I think it would be difficult and not cost effective.
- What makes the product unique?
The lattice grille is also key to heat dissipation, a clever design meaning that it’s actually more air than metal.
An array of hexagonally tessellated spheres is carved from one side of the aluminum slab and another offset array is carved from the other. These voids overlap to allow air to flow through. This process removes more than 50% of the material, leaving behind a strong structure that is in fact mostly air.
- What materials are used in the product?
Aluminum
- If you were to replicate the design, what do you think the workflow looks like from design to prototype?
This design is an ideation of several earlier designs. Earlier versions were made out of PLA.
1. Sketch it out
2. Design in CAD
3. Mill a solid piece of aluminum
4. Test air flow
- Is the product parametric in any way? If not, could it be and how?
Yes it is parametric, just look at it.
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Looking at Pole Bicycles: The Machine
- How is CNC milling used?
The bike frame is 100% CNC machined. The CNC milled parts are bonded together. This allows precise control of the tube thickness and weight, rather than having ballpark targets, minimizing variation between frames. Machining everything also allows them to use different grades of aluminum.
- Would the product design be possible without CNC milling?
Yes, but it would not have the same level of persuasion.
- What makes the product unique?
7075 T6 aluminum is 1,7 times stronger than conventional bike alloy 6061 T6. This makes it possible to manufacture the frame to be much lighter than normal aluminum bikes. Machining from high-quality billets that are also used in the aerospace industry means a superior material is used. The heat treatment is also more consistent than heat treating the frames in an oven.
- What materials are used in the product?
7075 T6 aluminum, 7075 T6 billets, titanium axles, the parts of the front and rear triangles are bonded together with glue.
- If you were to replicate the design, what do you think the workflow looks like from design to prototype?
- Sketch
- Build in CAD
- Run simulated stress tests
- Refine
- Configure
- Mill
- Assemble
- Go for a ride
- Is the product parametric in any way? If not, could it be and how?
I do not think the product is parametric in any way.
