Some beginner CNC uses

I've had my 1F for about 3 weeks now. It's been a hoot getting to know it. It's fascinating, frustrating and entertaining, too, and I think at some point, it will be productive. So far I've used it to make a few accessories for the CNC as well as for a couple of projects. After I got the spoilboard flattened, I made some simple clamps.

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Then I made a finger jointed drawer for the CNC cabinet. I learned quite a bit on this on how to use the Allowance Offset to get the fingers to mesh properly. The dog ears are needed to get the two parts to mate properly when cutting them flat. That's one reason I want to incorporate a vertical material orientation in the future; so I can cut finger joints and dovetails w/o the dog ears. This was fine for a shop cabinet however.

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Working on a "real" project, I made some large finger joint templates from MDF for a bench I was building.

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I used those with a top bearing mortising router bit to cut out the bulk of the slots in the legs and seat of this bench. I cut out the rest of the waste with a handsaw and and then used a bottom bearing flush cutting router bit from the other side to remove the residual waste. The parts fit so tight that I had to do some hand paring to loosen them up some, but it was far easier than cutting them all by hand.

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I used to sign my pieces by hand, but now that I have the CNC I decided to create a signature inlay. This is 3.5 x 1.75". I made a router template to go with it and used it to inlay one in the bottom of this bench.

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I can do better with the signature inlay, but this was OK for a start.

A couple of days ago I tried my hand at creating a VCarve inlay of a Celtic knot. It's 5.5" and not perfect, but close, and was pretty easy to do, far easier than trying something like this by hand. I have no clue how I would do that.

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Every day I think of something new I'd like to try. I'm about to try tiling in the next few days. Should be fun.

John

You're picking up things pretty fast, John!! Beautiful job on that inlay. Even though it's an "easy" technique...Murphy still loves it. LOL (DAMHIKT!)

BTW, good you made some clamps. As I'm sure you're also discovering hold-down and hold-in-place is really important because of the forces generated when cutting. Even a slight movement can thoroughly screw something up. I have a lot of experience there, too. ;)

The next time you make clamps use PVC material. I will never split.

Where would you get that PVC material? McMasterCarr?

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Originally Posted by ChrisA Edwards

Where would you get that PVC material? McMasterCarr?

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Sure, or Amazon.

John

Thanks Jim. V-Carve Pro has a few quirks that I'm still figuring out but for the most part I'm getting it. Still doing simple stuff though. I'm about to try my first tiling job on a piece of 48 x 60" Baltic birch plywood. I'm studying the toolpath simulations closely for any issues because I'd rather not make scrap out of what now costs at least $100 for a 5 x 5 x 3/4" sheet of the stuff. Whoever said that a CNC can make scrap very fast was spot on.

John

John, get some MDF to work your tiling out on first. Just be sure to change the thickness in the files to reflect what your test piece is...thinner is less expensive if your design will support it. I use a lot of 1/4" MDF for stuff like that.

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Originally Posted by John TenEyck

Thanks Jim. V-Carve Pro has a few quirks that I'm still figuring out but for the most part I'm getting it. Still doing simple stuff though. I'm about to try my first tiling job on a piece of 48 x 60" Baltic birch plywood. I'm studying the toolpath simulations closely for any issues because I'd rather not make scrap out of what now costs at least $100 for a 5 x 5 x 3/4" sheet of the stuff. Whoever said that a CNC can make scrap very fast was spot on.

John

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Have you browsed the Vectric hosted forums? There is a lot of good info buried in there.

It might take me a while to find it again but there is a very good discussion of the v-carve inlay technique and how to actually calculate and enter settings in Vcarve/Aspire based on the exact bits you have as well as material types. Much better than the by-guess and by-golly method espoused on most YouTube channels and blogs. So far I found it to produce better results but I had to move on to other "real" projects about a month ago and haven't gotten back to fiddling. Using VcarvePro and a Shapeoko 3 and other than grain orientation vs. sharp tips (my fault) got good results.

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Originally Posted by Rob Young

Have you browsed the Vectric hosted forums? There is a lot of good info buried in there.

It might take me a while to find it again but there is a very good discussion of the v-carve inlay technique and how to actually calculate and enter settings in Vcarve/Aspire based on the exact bits you have as well as material types. Much better than the by-guess and by-golly method espoused on most YouTube channels and blogs. So far I found it to produce better results but I had to move on to other "real" projects about a month ago and haven't gotten back to fiddling. Using VcarvePro and a Shapeoko 3 and other than grain orientation vs. sharp tips (my fault) got good results.

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Thanks Rob. The quirks I was referring to are with VCarve in general. I had no trouble with the VCarving toolpath. I think the little gaps I had were more related to inadequate clamping than with the parts. I haven't used the Vectric forums much yet. I've gotten amazingly fast responses from users on the Onefinity users forums so I've mostly stayed there. When I have searched on the Vectric forum the search results have been a mixed bag, sometimes helpful but often nothing or completely off based. For example, I tried finding out why the drilling toolpath sometimes will return a response something like "Check to make sure the tool will fit at the specified depth." Nothing. That particular problem is very frustrating. It can happen when I modify a valid toolpath to drill to some other depth, including shallower, for example.

Overall, I really like VCarve Pro. I'm sure I'll concur the quirks and my frustrations with it over time.

John

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Originally Posted by John TenEyck

Thanks Jim. V-Carve Pro has a few quirks that I'm still figuring out but for the most part I'm getting it. Still doing simple stuff though. I'm about to try my first tiling job on a piece of 48 x 60" Baltic birch plywood. I'm studying the toolpath simulations closely for any issues because I'd rather not make scrap out of what now costs at least $100 for a 5 x 5 x 3/4" sheet of the stuff. Whoever said that a CNC can make scrap very fast was spot on.

John

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John,
You might also consider scaling it down in size for your trial runs along with using some cheaper material as Jim has suggested for practicing with. Also I think what you are referring to as "tiling" we in the cnc plasma arena also consider "nesting". It is often also a good idea to install a sharpie marker mount to your
Z axis next to your router and do your trial run drawing on a sheet of paper attached to your table (instead of cutting). This is a good way to do a "proof of concept" and work out your design bugs before actually cutting.
David

Nice progress learning, thanks for posting!

That is good advice, David. Not being the most patient person, however, I looked at the toolpath simulations several times and decided it was time to give it a shot. What you called nesting is the same term used by Vectric, grouping the parts onto a sheet to maximize yield. Tiling is when you index the entire sheet along the X or Y axis and run a series of toolpaths. In my case, VCarve Pro automatically nests the parts onto the sheet when I import an assembly drawing from SketchUp. I moved some of the parts around but it did the bulk of the work automatically. The tiling feature turned out to be pretty straight forward to use. You just decide on the length or width, or both, of the tiles, place the sheet on the machine and establish X=0, Y=0, run the toolpath, index the sheet by the tile length, width, etc. and run the next set of toolpaths.

I was cutting the parts for one of my horizontal router mortisers from a sheet of Baltic birch that was 48"W wide 60" long. Here it is cutting the first set of toolpaths. There are some 1/8" dia holes that you can't see, that were cut first, then I changed to a 1/4" endmill to cut the 1/4" dia holes and everything else. The machine stops when you need to change bits and picks up again after.

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And here it is after all the toolpaths had been run for Tile 1.

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I set the tile length at 30.5" to minimize how many parts would span across to Tile 2; there are only 2. I slid the sheet 30.5" forward and proceeded to run the next set of toolpaths.

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It turned out well. There is a slight misalignment on the two parts from Tile 1 to Tile 2 but not much and plenty acceptable for this application. Otherwise, the parts all look good except the surface finish is better on the offcut than the parts themselves. I used a climb cut thinking that would give the best finish, and you would think that if the outside surfaces were poorer doing that then the inside surfaces would be better on the parts with cutouts but that was not the case. So there was some sanding required on the edges that I was hoping to avoid but they look good now.

Your advice to run a smaller job first isn't lost on me.

John

John, with cnc plasma cutting we refer to "tiling" as "indexing". For example - my Plasmacam cnc plasma table is 4x4. If I am cutting a part longer than 4 ft, say 6 ft. long, then the program allows for indexing where it will cut the first portion of the part, and then pause while I slide the sheet of material thru (under the gantry) so that the remaining part can be cut.

For example, the sign I am cutting below is longer than 4 ft, so I cut the top portion first and then "index" the sheet thru to cut the remainder.
So pretty much what you are doing with your cnc router.
David

Attachment 476111

By the way, I am very impressed with the capability of your new machine. Those are some great looking parts.
David

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Originally Posted by David Buchhauser

By the way, I am very impressed with the capability of your new machine. Those are some great looking parts.
David

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I'm very happy with my OneFinity CNC. It's not a CAMaster but it only costs a fraction. For a hobbyist it's a very capable machine.

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Originally Posted by Alex Zeller

I'm very happy with my OneFinity CNC. It's not a CAMaster but it only costs a fraction. For a hobbyist it's a very capable machine.

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If I didn't already have an Avid 4x4, I would give the OneFinity CNC some serious consideration. I like the fact that it is "semi-portable" and could be stowed away when not in use.
David

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Originally Posted by David Buchhauser

If I didn't already have an Avid 4x4, I would give the OneFinity CNC some serious consideration. I like the fact that it is "semi-portable" and could be stowed away when not in use.
David

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It's actually possible to mount it on a wall and use it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqVI...unflintDesigns

Thanks for sharing that video. Very versatile indeed!
David

Gotta wonder about the extras strain on the stepper motors in that orientation for sure!

Continuing on with my learning I made a little piece of curved molding yesterday, just because. VCarve Pro is pretty amazing; you can start with nothing more that the outer shape you want and a separate cross sectional view of the molding profile.

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You can turn that into a toolpath with just a few clicks and verify it's what you want with the simulation view.

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And then machine the molding.

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The finish straight off the machine was pretty amazing, as you can see above. It won't take much sanding to make it finish ready.

This little piece took almost 30 minutes to cut so you wouldn't want to have to make a lot of molding this way, but for special projects like the gooseneck moldings on a grandfather clock or armoire, or an oval picture frame, or some crown molding for a cabinet it looks like a much easier option than doing it by hand. And compared to a molding machine the tooling costs are essentially zero as you use the bits you already have. Amazing what you can with this thing.

John

The molding tool path is a really neat "problem solver" beyond just the obvious use. I've been employing it for relief cuts on guitar bodies, for example, to avoid the 3D dance which takes a lot more time to cut.