Some interesting trivets - VIDEO Available

[David Falkner]

When we opened our Etsy shop a year ago I offered a Superman style trivet and the option to have it customized with the letter of your choice. I had made one with the S for my son because he likes to cook and I thought it would be cool. Turned out the very first order we got was for a customized trivet with a 'C' instead of the S. The finish is straight mineral oil and the notches are to allow air in/out since these are trivets for hot pans.

This is the 'C' we did -
007 - C.jpg

This is the original -
001 - Superman trivet.jpg

Nobody has asked for one since that first order but all of a sudden this week we've gotten two custom orders. The first one was for a set of 7 trivets with B1-B7. Doing one letter is easy because I can fully support it around the perimeter but doing two meant thinking through the support to keep the numbers from breaking off or chipping while cutting so I added a cross-grain triangular piece on the back side.

These are the B1-B7 trivets -
002 - Custom trivet, B1-B7.jpg

And the back side with the cross-grain piece -
006 - Custom trivet, B1-B7.jpg

The next order came in the day I finished the Walnut set and this one is Maple with cherries. I had to make sure the stem of the cherries was thick enough not to break off during cutting but not be so thick that it looked odd.
001 - S trivet Maple - cherries.jpg

I'm working on a video of the cutting and should complete that soon. What's neat about that is I used the CNC to cut all the way through the 3/4" material in one pass. In addition to the table saw, planer, drum sander, bandsaw for resawing and other tools in the shop there are 11 different steps in cutting these on the CNC with a lot of bit changes so it wasn't really a simple 'push the button and wait' sort of project.

I used a 1/4" downcut spiral on the back side and then glued the insert into place on all 7 Walnut pieces. When that dried I ran them all through the drum sander to get to 0.740" thickness and then used the same downcut bit to cut the initial 0.100" into the top. I don't have a compression bit and didn't want the top edge frayed like an upcut bit does. And since I planned to use Fusion 360's 3D Adaptive Clearing profile the way it is designed to be used with the bit cutting the full depth of the material thickness I really only needed to go just deep enough to make a clean cut edge. The next bit was the 1/4" upcut spiral and it's fascinating to watch it cut the entire 3/4" in one pass. Scary at first but definitely fascinating! I followed that with a 1/8" downcut spiral to finish the inside and then a 90° bit for chamfering the edges. It's possible the chamfer would have taken care of any frayed edges but I didn't want to risk anything splintering or tearing.

Enjoy!
David

[Jim Becker]

Those are very kewel designs, David! Good idea on the backside stuff for support, too. I'm might play with that myself to learn something new. I look forward to the video for sure.

I've been using a .25" compression bit a lot lately as it's what i use to both pocket and cut out the various boxes I've been making. I do do multiple passes, but I make sure that the first pass is deep enough so that the up-cut portion is buried and the edge is in the down-cut range. For both pocketing and cutout, I leave a slight allowance and let the cutter clean the whole edge on the last pass. By doing it this way, I minimize cutter changes for all of the designs. and have carefully ordered the toolpaths along the same theme. For example, the boxes and ornaments are all two sided designs like you are doing with the trivets and I try to order things so that not only are all tool paths on a side that use the same cutter in order, but so that the cutter that's in the spindle when I complete the top is the one that's used for the first toolpath on the bottom side after I flip it. Tool changes are not terrible for me since they auto-measure, but I do have to physically change them with no ATC.

BTW, the Whiteside compression bits are available on Amazon for a reasonable price...I picked up a couple of them not long ago and have been using them for the above mentioned work.

[David Falkner]

Here's the video on making the trivets -



David

[Bill George]

David where did you download the Mach3/4 Post Processor for this? I do have Fusion 360 but have never done any routing projects.

[David Falkner]

This is a profile within Fusion 360 - 3D Adaptive Clearing. The post processor doesn't factor in for the cut - it's just G-code.

David

[David Falkner]

The guy who ordered the 7 trivets told me that his wife has 6 sisters and all their names start with 'B'. Their dad nicknamed them B1 - B7 in order of their birth years. Tonight they sent me a photo of the all the sisters in a group and each holding their respective Bx trivet. It was a neat photo and I was glad to be a part of it. I won't post the photo because it's not really mine to share, but that's the story behind the 7 trivets.

David

[Jim Becker]

That's a pretty kewel background on the project!

As I mentioned under the video, that adaptive clear is pretty neat. I'm not about to learn a whole new piece of software right now to get access to it, but would certainly welcome it should, um..."other software"...start to support a similar thing.

[Art Mann]

Good looking pieces. I think personalization is a great way to add value and profit to products.

Here is one version of an easily personalized trivet design we came up with. It is much simpler to build than your design but it probably sells for a lot less too. It is 1/4" Walnut laminated to 1/2" Maple. The the 3 letters are inserted per customer request. I usually do bevels and round overs on a conventional router table instead of CNC router if possible because it is easier and faster to me.

1-DSC_0488.JPG

Here is a mostly Vcarve that is easy to customize from a template and cuts really fast. I have done quite a few of these.

DSC_0529.jpg

[David Falkner]

Those are good looking trivets, Art! Nice work.

David