Well after 5 months of building and planning, it’s finally time to put the bits to hardwood. Aside from making my wasteboard and clamps/ table accessories, this was my first run at a real project with my very own CNC (I have a lot of job related cnc experience.) 24” x 11 1/4” x 3/4” Red Oak. I did have a tool path error with a v bit in the small flattened area in the lower left corner, but I’ve decided to inlay a piece of 1/8” aluminum plate in the pocket and engrave the map description on it. I’m also going to cut off all of the border around the relief, including the text along the bottom as I’m not satisfied with how that turned out. Some kind of blue-green epoxy will fill the pockets cut at the water line. Overall a pretty big confidence boost as this was a rather involved project that I’ve been working on for months now. I intend to make a handful of these on 30” x 15” x 1 1/2” hardwood to attempt to sell, but they won’t be cheap. I’ll probably try the next one with hard maple, because I feel like there’s a lot going on in the grain of that red oak and it’s a little distracting.
This is very impressive, and detailed! I like it. Can’t wait to see what it will look like after you fill in the pockets, and the water line. This should really make it “Pop”.
I received my woodworker last week, and thus far I have made three sample basic relief pieces just to test the performance for functionality of the unit. Nothing grand. I am am a noobmeister to the cnc router arts, yet I am totally fascinated by its potential. The majority if not all of the work I intend on doing will be carves for wall plaques, 3D bas relief on Pine, Red Oak, or Teak. There will likely be a lot of mistakes along the way, but I will accept them as the building blocks to making a better, stronger version of (me),
Like @ConvenientWoodwork, I am also curious of what bits and feeds/speeds you worked with to create this this piece.
Here’s a sample of my first ever recessed Bald Eagle Head, I find the quality a bit “Scruffy” though.
I used a .250 Flat End Mill for the Roughing, and a .125 Ball Nose for the Finish. I didn’t want to take hours running this carve so I reduced it down to 4” x 4”, and pulled the whole thing off within ~75 minutes. So now I’m off to more refined work, and I would like better details than this eagle head.
I take this opportunity to tap the knowledgeable minds of the OneFinity Forum Members that are most inclined; for their tips on getting the best results and details and using the correct bits for my applications.
BTW, I’d like to get awesome details, but not run 24 hr cuts.
Hello and thanks for the kind words!
I used a 1/4” Down Cut flat end mill for my roughing pass, 50% DOC, 35% step over at 100IPM feed and 50IPM plunge. A raster roughing operation along the y axis, at about 3 hours. There was minimal tear out even though the bit was cutting both climb and conventional depending on which way the gantry was moving. I may revisit this operation because there was some slight tear out in places, but it was mostly removed during finishing. I may increase the machining allowance above the .5mm Vectric has it defaulted to. Finishing pass as a 45 degree offset raster with 1/16” diameter, 1/4” shank Tapered Ballnose Endmill. Depth of cut varies in the 3D finishing, depending on how your roughing bit fits into the geometry, but step over was 8%. 100IPM for both feed and plunge with the tapered ballnose and it took 17 hours. I did the other pocketing using a 1/8” upcut at 50%DOC, 35% step over, 100IPM feed and 50IPM plunge, backed up with the tapered ballnose at the same feeds and speeds as the finishing pass. 18000 rpm for all operations. I may reduce the size of the tapered ballnose, or reduce the step over to 5% for the next one. I expect the finishing pass on a larger piece to take upwards of 30 hours. The code for the finishing pass was nearly 1.7 million lines and it ran start to finish without a hiccup.
