Capturing the Hatter's Madness in Mastercam

It starts with a picture for inspiration.

Then it continues with sketching the outline of the mad hatter in Solidworks. This became the master sketch that all of the other pieces will be based off.

We had to think about how could we keep the essence of the mad hatter design with a limited amount of resources, as in we had to consider the one-color limitation of injection molding and the time it takes to assemble the pieces we make. Thus, we decided to use an interference fit. Below is the piece that will fit into the spacer of the yoyo. Attachment to the spacer will ensure that it will move with the whole yo yo.

Here are some pieces to be fitted into the adapter above.

Now the hat is where the real magic happens. It will spin around a pin as the yo yo is spinning.

Now we import our sketches from Solidworks into Mastercam to do our tool paths. The dot patterns show us where the injector pin could be located so we could use the pin to push our part of the core after the plastic has cooled.

We are now adding the different pathways to the sketches. We are making molds for these parts, so we are carving out now.

Life was pretty mad while making those pathways. The hair of the hatter was not a clean geometry that Mastercam favored.

Nonetheless, I persisted.

In Mastercam, you can simulate cutting of the stock after you finish your pathways. Ta-Da! This is the core side of the mold.

Once I mastered the basic toolpaths commands, I started taking advantage of Mastercam unique machining capabilities to add details. The first details I added was on the cavity side of the mold. By creating pockets on the cavity side, I could bring the mad hatter into 3D space. All the details on the cavity are reflected from the mold.

On the hat, you can see there's a slip that says "10/6" which is a reference from the movie that means that that hat is sold for 10 shillings and a sixpence.

I'm especially excited about the bow tie of the mad hatter because I chose to machine that pocket with "parallel spirals" so pattern will show up in the plastic.