Concept Prototyping - Shutter Button

One of the detailed parts needing to be cut was the shutter buttons which are a prominent feature of the rear of the camera. The top surface of the button has a slight curvature. only with a depth of about 1mm, but it is very noticeable and pleasant to touch. Into this surface a little aperture logo is cut, to imply the buttons function without the need for words (the camera is ambidextrous so words cannot be used due to orientation). Cutting such small fine details required a multi step cutting process and a fair bit of trial and error. Below you can see the very tight cutting paths which were used to cut the motif separately using a very small 2mm ball end cutter.

After machining I noticed the 3mm ball cutter used to finish the curvature of the top surface left a horrible pattern. Something wrong with feeds or spindle speed caused it, but with the damage done there was only a lot of polishing left to fix it. Progressive papers from 120 through to 1000 eventually worked out the cutting trails and brought out the motif nicely. These were the first pars to be finished in the satin look aluminium finish which will feature across all the aluminium parts of the camera.