[CarveOne]

I'm not normally one who has reactions to things that others have, and usually I don't use this much of the purple heart wood on any one project. Just small pieces for decoration.

If I have the flu I usually feel sick, but this time there is no fever or other symptoms related to flu that I might have picked up at the camp.. Just the clogged sinuses, so that's why I think it's the wood. I have some cocobolo, zircote, bloodwood, padauk, and other tropical woods that are listed on the online wood toxicity charts.

[cd_edwards]

Nice work as usual C1. I finally bit the bullet and purchased a water cooled spindle off of ebay. Took a few minutes to get the 2.2kw spindle up and running and part of a day getting it to work with mach3 for spindle on/off control as well as speed. Now just need the special 1/4" ID, 5/16 OD coolant hose to arrive and I can install it. Just before I purchased the spindle I unfortunately purchased a Kent Dust Shoe for my PC690. They are 8mm's larger than a 80mm spindle, so I'll have to figure something out for mounting it.

[CarveOne]

Hey Colten,

I haven't seen any posts from you lately and wondered if you had wandered off to other interests for a while.

You should be able to find something that can be used as spacers/shims to adapt the spindle.to the larger diameter router mounts if that is the situation.

[cd_edwards]

That was my thought as well. Cutting out a circle donut and gluing it to the original would work as well I think. Pretty sure I've got some 1/2" plexi sitting around..

I've been lurking and that's about it. Doing some cutting when not busy at work. Had a unpleasant surprise on easter long weekend however. Someone broke into my shop. Stole my design computer along with all my dongle's for software/hardware, some HD's sitting loose, couple of 24" monitors on a stand, several cordless drills, metal cutoff saw, RC helicopter and a couple of propane torches. Thankfully all my graphic work and a backup of my router config was sitting on the two external HD's sitting in a corner and they left them behind. Still took me a couple of weeks to get a new computer setup almost as good as I had. And of course insurance is dragging there feet in the attempt to figure out a cost on replacement value of everything taken. At least my deductible is only $500 instead of the $1000 I originally thought.

[cd_edwards]

Oh something I did recently was finally cut some aluminum with my router.. I had re-surfaced the table and sprayed with poly. So I decided to attempt it. Had a piece of 3/4" aluminum sitting around for making some edge finders (google triple edge finder). Worked out well. Used my new milling machine with a boring head to make the circle exact. Now I need to figure out what todo with the other 5 of these things. since I can only use one at a time

[CarveOne]

That was my thought as well. Cutting out a circle donut and gluing it to the original would work as well I think. Pretty sure I've got some 1/2" plexi sitting around..

I've been lurking and that's about it. Doing some cutting when not busy at work. Had a unpleasant surprise on easter long weekend however. Someone broke into my shop. Stole my design computer along with all my dongle's for software/hardware, some HD's sitting loose, couple of 24" monitors on a stand, several cordless drills, metal cutoff saw, RC helicopter and a couple of propane torches. Thankfully all my graphic work and a backup of my router config was sitting on the two external HD's sitting in a corner and they left them behind. Still took me a couple of weeks to get a new computer setup almost as good as I had. And of course insurance is dragging there feet in the attempt to figure out a cost on replacement value of everything taken. At least my deductible is only $500 instead of the $1000 I originally thought.

One of the thicker cutting board (HDPE) might work also.

That's a real bummer.

[CarveOne]

All finished except for a final touch-up coat of lacquer.

[cd_edwards]

well today since I had plenty of time and happened to have a 1/2" piece of acrylic, I spent a hour vectorizing a trace of the top half of the dust shoe. Then I used the new dust shoe to create a replacement for when I switch over to my 80mm spindle. Still waiting on my water lines to arrive. Ordered some from US Plastics 1/4 ID 5/16 OD which btw they are discontinuing. They only had 10 25ft lengths left and I bought two. I attempted to purchase some locally, tried Home Depot, Canadian Tire, etc. Found a company called Greenline who carry it and supposedly had 75ft in stock but really expensive. so I asked for 5ft and some two ended 1/4" barbed fittings. Turns out they were attempting to sell me 3/16 ID as the 1/4 inch fitting would not fit. so I wait on the mail... Hope it get's here before my short term disability runs out. Would really suck if I've spent the last month at home and it arrives the day I go back to work.

[CarveOne]

Yesterday morning I started working on another style of carving to be used on a future Paradise box. I had been looking at custom door carvings and ran across a sort of gothic style lattice layout using diagonal boards with scallops and ornate metal plates. I liked the look, so I created something manually in Aspire that resembles the look of the door pattern. The rounded border and a recessed area is done with a raster tool path and a 1/16" tapered ball nose cutter. (No roughing tool path) Then the gothic shapes are Vcarved with a 60 degree V-bit. Then the diamond shapes are also Vcarved with the same cutter. The gothic and diamond shapes are projected onto the 3D model for the border, which causes them to be Vcarved down into the recessed area. This was done on a rear panel file and can be used directly on the front panel by copying and pasting the vectors and model into the front panel file. The vectors can be reused to create the lattice on the top and side panels. The simulation image has been colored to show some of the details more clearly. The files will be saved until needed. I may try cutting the one panel in scrap wood just to see see how it looks when stained.

What do you guys out there think? Like it - or not?

[CarveOne]

Today I worked on the fancy extruded cross again, and finished the project files. The gcode file is 1,059,396 lines of text. Took about 20 seconds to write it. The boards I glued together needs to be cut in the two glue lines and re-glued or I need to surface plane both sides. Even with two solid concrete blocks weighing it down it still curved. It's wider than will fit through my 13" thickness planer. So, it will be cut when the material is ready.

In past skeletonized crosses I've made the 1/8" cutter leaves a rough cut wnere it tries to cut a shallow angle corner. I used the boundary vector offset tool to create the vectors that are used to pocket through the material. Most of the inside corners are very sharp turns. This time I made a 0.125" circle vector and used it as a reference in each corner to edit the nodes to create a slightly larger diameter arc to allow the cutter to "roll through" each corner. My thought is that this will prevent a lot of the table shaking and reduce the amount of filing and sanding I have to do. It made no difference in the estimated cut time, and should eliminate some of the rough turns that leave cutter marks. I hope it will be beneficial.

[atwooddon]

Yesterday morning I started working on another style of carving to be used on a future Paradise box. I had been looking at custom door carvings and ran across a sort of gothic style lattice layout using diagonal boards with scallops and ornate metal plates. I liked the look, so I created something manually in Aspire that resembles the look of the door pattern. The rounded border and a recessed area is done with a raster tool path and a 1/16" tapered ball nose cutter. (No roughing tool path) Then the gothic shapes are Vcarved with a 60 degree V-bit. Then the diamond shapes are also Vcarved with the same cutter. The gothic and diamond shapes are projected onto the 3D model for the border, which causes them to be Vcarved down into the recessed area. This was done on a rear panel file and can be used directly on the front panel by copying and pasting the vectors and model into the front panel file. The vectors can be reused to create the lattice on the top and side panels. The simulation image has been colored to show some of the details more clearly. The files will be saved until needed. I may try cutting the one panel in scrap wood just to see see how it looks when stained.

What do you guys out there think? Like it - or not?

C1 I like that carving a lot. It has a more delicate look to it and think it would go well on a Paradise Box or other carving.

Don

[CarveOne]

Thanks Don,

I cut the test sample and made some changes to the width of the border, and cleaned up the ends of the pattern so they look about like the top and bottom of the pattern. I also deepened the recesses from 0.1" to 0.125". I'll flip the test board over, cut the design again, and proceed to put some finish on it today. Photo later.

[CarveOne]

I managed to cut the modified pattern today but had no time to apply finish to it. It has promise. I used a Whiteside #1550 cutter for the pockets hoping for a smother finish in the bottoms of the pockets but the cutter is not new and gave no better results than the #1540 cutter I used on the first trial cut. I may need to make a ball nose finishing tool path to clean it up.

[CarveOne]

Skydiver Guy had some foam cut to make the mattress and pillows yesterday while he was visiting for other reasons. His daughter was ecstatic when she first saw the bed. They took the bed with them when having the foam cut to size and the employees at the foam store were very impressed with what she was getting. They told her to take care of it and pass it on to her own daughter when/if she has one. They called it her heirloom. Stuff like this just makes all the effort and out of pocket costs vaporize from memory. It's all about doing something nice for the little ones.

The cell phone photo was done in a hurry under poor conditions last evening while I was working on something else for them as they were getting ready to leave for home. On Friday we watched Skydiver Guy take the Oath of Allegiance for US Citizenship. A long time coming for him. No more renewing green cards now. Retired USMC vet.

[nlancaster]

That is awesome.

And even better that Skydiver Guy is a US citizen now

[CarveOne]

Thanks very much. I'm happy that it has turned out well on both counts.

[CarveOne]

I'm still tinkering with the new lattice pattern. Last evening I scaled it up enough to remove one row of the gothic shape. This was to widen the width of the lattice without having to completely start over. I think I like this third version best so far. I have both the ellipses and the diamond shapes in the tool path list as options so that gcode files for either type can be generated, or none at all. One more thought is to offset the gothic pattern inwards just enough to allow creating another pass with a 1/16" ball nose cutter to smooth out the bottoms of the gothic shapes without cutting into the slopes on the sides of the lattice. The V-bit leaves the pocket surfaces rougher than I would like. Doing this pass will add less time than it takes to clean up the pockets by hand.

This pattern should make a very nice P box or something else some day.

[CarveOne]

This is what V2 looks like with the Java gel stain in the recesses. It needs a final sealer coat of polyurethane over it. The roughness left in the pockets actually gives it more character and I may end up not smoothing that out with a ball nose pass as mentioned previously.

I'll start working on the parts for a new Paradise box using this or the larger V3 pattern. One thing to do now is to figure out what to do in the center of the top panel, or just do nothing at all there. It's not being made for anyone in particular. If there is any text on the top panel it will probably be a V carved gothic style font.

[tinygiants]

CarveOne, I am inspired by your work. A thought I had with your latest pattern, is to cut it out of a thinner stock of contrasting color to your paradise box. Then cut an inlay pocket for it to recess into. The contrasting color box will show thru the openings.

Just a thought.

Please keep sharing your projects. They are keeping my desire to build a CNC high.

[CarveOne]

I had not thought of that, but it works for me.. It's extra work to some degree but's a nice idea. To eliminate any gaps around the inlay the V-inlay procedure can be used.

Not knowing your skills and capabilities, to make things like the Paradise box you don't need a large machine. Michael Tyler's projects (like this one is based on) are designed to be made on a CarveWright machine. He is the owner of the CarveWright forums. I almost started my CNC hobby with one of those (I was looking at the Compucarve version sold by Sears at the time) and decided that I wanted something in a larger format. 3' x 4' or 4' x 4' is a good size to build at home when you have limited space and/or limited funds. They can make parts for 95% of woodcraft projects and most cabinetry parts like doors and drawer parts. The rest of the larger cabinet parts can be cut on a table saw.

All I can say otherwise is to pick a good design or come up with a DIY design of your own and start collecting the parts you need to build it. A good alternative is the CNC Router Parts plans, or buy a kit.