[MakeCNC] Allosaurus

FYI - post contains affiliate links. I cut and put together another model from MakeCNC. This time an Allosaurus available to purchase here. Everything went together with ease. I didn’t run into any troubles with this model. One thing I’ve found invaluable in putting together models such as this one is the use of a precision applicator for glue. I bought a set of these bottles off of amazon for less than $10 and it has made putting glue into these little slots a breeze. I highly recommend them to anyone doing similar work. I use Titebond II wood glue in them. The model is made from proofgrade walnut plywood.

You can see this project and others I’ve done on my blog Projects — Lasered By Me

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Awesome.

I like makecnc’s anatomically correct models. I got this same one, but it was too skull-heavy and would not stand up. Does yours stand freely?

The anatomically correct allosaurus has an integrated base and stays upright.

I also find that the makecnc stuff can be altered in one good way: I merge the spine parts to make a single unbroken spine instead of the glued up default.

Also a hearty second on needle bottles, they are awesome. What do you put in yours? I have water, wood glue, denatured alcohol and windex. Thinking about swapping windex for full strength household ammonia.

Previously:

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Yeah, mine free stands. I did make one minor adjustment. I swapped the position of 2 of the neck pieces so it’ll hold it’s head just a hair higher. This probably made the difference in weight balance. It teeters a bit but manages to stand up.

Funny thing, I actually have the MakeCNC lifetime subscription. And I thought I was cutting the anatomically correct version, but then realized I had cut the wrong model. I like the stand for the AC version, but will say that it takes up a lot more materials.

For my bottles I pretty much just use them for glue at the moment. But I may do some with rubbing alcohol in them to help with cleaning tasks.

I did the EXACT same thing, I was moving quickly and bought the wrong allosaurus. Ha!

I have since gotten the AC stegosaurus and AC dimetrodon. Dimetrodon’s arms are a little weak, I cracked one and need to glue or recut the parts to repair him. For now he’s just been in a fight and is a bit limpy.

I also find that I look at the models and think they are a bit rough. Odd node transitions, etc. I tend to spend an hour or two cleaning up the SVG, then scaling it to be a tighter fit, and (tediously) arranging the parts into a really densely packed cutsheet to reduce material waste… and only then finally get to cutting. I got the Allosaurus bones to fit on a single sheet of BB ply, then a separate partial sheet for the base.

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Ah yes, manual nesting. I’ve had a bear of a time trying to find a solid automatic nesting program that works for most models I try it out with (particularly makecnc’s since as you noted sometimes their models can be a bit weird). I tried out a 7 day trial of nestfab. It works pretty darn good, but cost over $2k. They have a pay per model program called mynesting. I haven’t tried out that, but it charges $5-$7 per file that you export. I’m going to try out that program next seeing as it’d take forever to recoupe the cost of nestfab. I will say though, it does a great job. Here’s the nest done on the Allosuarus (non AC model). Picture is purposefully small to avoid giving away their pattern2018-07-16_13-03-28

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Have you tried SVGnest? I was wondering how well a free one compares.

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I have tried it and had mixed results with it.

It seems to not recognize certain types of lines, so often times the model comes in missing lines. This results in objects being broken and thus all of their line segments being treated individually rather than as a whole object. I think it has to do with how the lines are drawn when putting together the model, but I’m not sure exactly what causes it to do this. I have had some limited success with svgnest, and I will continue to try it as a first option since its free. But honestly it fails about 90% of the time for me. Nestfab is also insanely fast compared to svgnest. It gets the first iterations done in a few seconds on my computer compared to svgnest taking several minutes for more complex models. I usually let nestfab run for a couple of minutes total and it gets through quite a few iterations and tends to get densely packed very quickly in the process.

I did have one issue with nestfab where it converted my filled circles into outlines with no fill upon bringing it back into Illustrator. But for the most part, nestfab has been much more reliable for me (and I assume mynesting will be the same since it’s produced by the same company).

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Thanks. I did not have anything sufficiently complex enough to try. I ended up doing it by hand.

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He’s pretty cool!

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Nice job on the dino. I just ordered the bottles, thanks for the link.

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Awesome! Hope you get as much benefit out of them as I do.