Introducing Camp Six: an Onshape-based frame design and ordering system (seeking beta testers!)

George_Anderson

Fellow Onshapers! After months of using this forum's incredible experts to answer countless questions, I hope at last to return the favor. I'm delighted to introduce an Onshape-driven experience to rapidly design and order custom metal frames.

Using our Featurescript collection (still in closed beta), you quickly sketch your frame as a wireframe mesh, and then we compute all the 3D details (e.g. tube coping and joinery). We rapidly make the elements of the frame on our custom CNC plasma/welding machines (it feels like 3D printing, but with steel!). We flat-pack the elements, ship them to you from our warehouse in Santa Cruz, California, and you can assemble it with simple tools.

This is a very nice alternative to 80/20 in many cases (much cheaper, and no measuring/cutting required), especially where the geometry gets non-rectilinear. The whole point of the system is to help engineers and designers build faster.

We're looking for beta testers to try our Featurescript collection to design and order steel frames. DM me or reply here if you're interested, especially if you have a specific application in mind.

Check out www.campsix.com to see what we've made so far, order demo products, or request a quote for rapid turnaround custom work!

billy2

nice site, are you going to allow some custom designing on your site?



Your products are really nice!

MichaelPascoe

This is really cool!

tim_hess427

This is really cool! 

I'm curious about the strength of the joints since they're different from traditional welded tube joints and 80/20 type frame joints. Some sort of benchmarking would be neat to see. If nothing else, it would help designers to have a better understanding of the capabilities of the system. 

George_Anderson

billy2 said:

nice site, are you going to allow some custom designing on your site?

Yes, eventually you'll use our Featurescript collection (and perhaps an app in the future) to design your own frame and then we'll make it and ship it. Beta testers will be able to do that soon, and then the general public after it stabilizes. (We can also do custom work where you roughly draw what you need in Onshape, share it with us, and we can sketch out a solution with our system.)

tim_hess427 said:

I'm curious about the strength of the joints since they're different from traditional welded tube joints and 80/20 type frame joints. Some sort of benchmarking would be neat to see. If nothing else, it would help designers to have a better understanding of the capabilities of the system. 

Great point. We have several types of bolted joints and gussets, and have done some rough in-house tests on them. A rigorous  benchmark is on the roadmap. We like to build many frames to be statically rigid. And we can also cope the tube connections, and provide hidden sleeve joints, so you can pre-assemble the frame with temporary joints, and then weld all the connections manually without a jig. That's how we finished the "hanging egg chair" product.

tim_hess427

Will there be square tubing options as well? 

I'm thinking about use cases in automation equipment or test equipment and I can see lots of scenarios where you build a machine and then realize later on that you need to add an extra sensor or something. This is pretty trivial with 80/20 type systems, but it would be a different challenge when dealing with round tubes.  At least with square tubes, it would be fairly easy to drill and tap a hole quickly. 

Excited to see how this goes! Good luck to you guys. 

George_Anderson

tim_hess427 said:

Will there be square tubing options as well?

Yes, our machines are designed to support square tubing as well. The software to support it should be ready within a month or so. We also think square tubing is the right way to go for many applications. Agreed about later customization -- lots of options here. We can include regularly spaced predrilled mounting holes or flanges. Where continuous positioning flexibility is needed, you can use our frame for 95% of the equipment, and just mount a single 80/20 rail on axes where you expect to need that mounting flexibility.

tim_hess427

George_Anderson said:

tim_hess427 said:

Will there be square tubing options as well?

Yes, our machines are designed to support square tubing as well. The software to support it should be ready within a month or so. We also think square tubing is the right way to go for many applications. Agreed about later customization -- lots of options here. We can include regularly spaced predrilled mounting holes or flanges. Where continuous positioning flexibility is needed, you can use our frame for 95% of the equipment, and just mount a single 80/20 rail on axes where you expect to need that mounting flexibility.

Sounds awesome!

bill_schnoebelen

Nice! 80/20 definetly has it's uses, but it is a pita to procure and gets heavy fast. It seems like you guys are doing an automated ironworker.