The Model of the Month for November has been awarded to Peter Böker and his design of a fully and accurately jointed Bessey knife!  Although there were a number of impressive and creative designs this month, the amount of design accuracy involved with this design, and time spent creating the joints really put this model over the top.  Read on to see what lead to this creation and learn more about our latest Model of the Month winner!

Peter Böker is a 44 year old father of 3 living in Bavaria (Where is Bavaria you ask?  Turns out it is part of Germany!).  He has had a pretty amazing journey from apprentice manufacturer to advanced designer.  Check out his story below to find out more!

The Early Days:

“I started my professional career with an apprenticeship at a company that constructed air conditioners, becoming a full time employee shortly after.  This is where I began to grow my knowledge of lathes and mills, but at this time it was all done by hand; no digital tools or glass fiber measuring.

Later in my career, as technology became more prevalent with respect to these machines, we modified our lathes to get glass fiber measuring.  This was a great time saver, and the first time that the digital world began to enter my typically manual work process.”

Welcome to the Digital World:

“In 1990 I purchased my first personal computer.  Curious about this new technology, I wanted to figure out whether I could apply this to my work, or even determine new uses.  Over the next few years I dived deeper into this new world, trading my manufacturing for lathes and mills for programming on the PC.

Now I’m a full time programmer at LivingLogic AG in Germany, developing high grade web applications for living-apps.com.  But I realized something is missing.  I was a builder, a builder of metal things and I miss my metal!  And now I develop software?  There must be a way to make these things come together.  This is where CAD and CAM came into the picture.

Having a deep background in mills, I decided to design and construct my own CNC-mill.  Because of my background, the planning was no problem.  The bigger issue was learning to design the machine using CAD!  After a big learning curve, frustration and a significant amount of lost data my first mill was finished.  This one was a good seller and I wanted to build a second one, but in a faster more precise fashion.”

Enter Fusion 360:

“To avoid the pain that I had to go through with my first design, I wanted to replace my existing CAD package.  After much searching I found Fusion 360, and the monthly rental option was set at a great price for me, while offering all of the functionality that I needed.  This change turned out to be a great decision!  With Fusion 360 I was able to design the new mill faster and with less frustration than before.  With built-in CAM, the G-code generation was simple and effective, so I could build the machines more quickly.

So how is all of this related to the Bessey knife?  Well the knife was a study to learn more of the Fusion 360 workflows and techniques for me to create even more in-depth, functional CAD models.  Learning how to apply joints and running motion analysis will help me to avoid some of the problems that I encountered in my last design.  So even though the design doesn’t directly relate to my passion, the key learning’s from this knife are directly applicable to my next design in Fusion 360 Ultimate.”

One more time, congratulations to Peter Böker on winning the Model of the Month for November!  Thank you for your hard work and I’m looking forward to seeing what you have coming next.  For any of you that want to win the crown for December, start working on an amazing design and get it uploaded to the Fusion 360 Gallery!  I can’t wait to see the creative designs you come up with!