Some of you, who have read my machine build thread, may have caught that I was getting married soon. Well soon was this last Saturday. For the reception my brother in law brewed 2 batches of beer for us, one was a Nut Brown Ale and the second was a Mint Chocolate Stout. I decided to make a couple tapper handles for the beer. I am not very artsy so this was a bit of a stretch for me, I hit up google images and decided on an acorn for the Nut Brown Ale and a mint leaf for the Mint Chocolate Stout. I did all the CAD work in SolidWorks and used HSMxpress to generate the g-code files. The Nut Brown Ale tapper has over 7 hours of spindle time into it. I profiled with a 1/4" end mill, cut the acorn lines with a 1/16" ball nose end mill, cleared the lettering with a 1/32" flat end mill, finished the lettering with a 0.020" ball nose end mill. The Mint Chocolate Stout has about 3 hours of spindle time into it. To add to the stress of getting these done the week before the wedding, I had a problem with my spindle motor and had to swap in a backup while I got it checked out. The backup motor is on a 1 hp 1800 RPM motor (only willing to run it up to 3600 RPM). If I had my factory spindle motor on the machine I could have cut the cycle times nearly in half. I used 2 pieces of 1X4 walnut to make the blanks for the handles. The Nut Brown Ale is 1.5" thick 3.4" wide 6" tall and the Mint Chocolate Stout is 1.5" thick 3.4" wide 8" tall.

Ultimately I got the handles done in time, and everybody who got to see them really liked them.

CNC mill acorn beer tapper - YouTube

CNC mill mint beer tapper - YouTube

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The handles all done with milling, just needing stems and finish
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The handles installed at the wedding
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