MiD Student Blog
Join our student bloggers as they discuss design, business, and everyday happenings in the studio.
Recently...
Christmas Break with NextFab
Christmas break was great. I travelled a bit, saw my family and a lot of old friends. One of highlights of the break was taking advantage NextFab's metal fabrication class. The goal is to get you comfortable using their machines while having you build something. They provide you a square foot of eighth inch steel and recommend you make some shelf brackets. The class is broken in to two parts.
Part one focuses more on prep work and finishing. Nick and I were shown how to use tools like an angle grinder, a die grinder, the iron worker and the plasma cutter. Most of the time was spent on using the plasma cutter since it's obviously the most interesting and required the most technical knowledge and dexterity to use it effectively. I was amazed at how easy it was to cut through metal using a plasma cutter. It's one of those things that's easy to learn but hard to master. As this point though, I'm just happy learning. See more pictures from Part I here.
The second part of the class focuses more on the assembly. This class was dedicated to welding, MIG welding that is. We learned both steel and aluminum and got some practice setting up jigs which can be almost as tricky as the welding itself. See more pictures from Part II here.
