[CarveOne]

I finished the layout of the instrument panel last evening and cut it today. Took 3 hours and 45 minutes. Feed rate for the weave was 200 ipm and the hole pockets were 150 ipm. The 1/16" tapered ball nose cutter has been used a lot and the walnut was very stringy, so it will take considerable effort to clean up the weave. The owner took it home to do some of the sanding work himself and I told him not to do anything with the weave - leave that area for me to do. He will fit the holes to the instruments using his spindle sander. Turns out that the instruments are not 2" and 3.75" but are oversize by at least 20 thousandths.

He'll bring it back tomorrow and I'll work on it some more this weekend. The finish will be Deft clear lacquer unless someone tells me that it is a poor choice. The hot rod stays in a white enclosed trailer when not on the road.

[kuroguy]

I've tried just about every type of finish and if you're looking for a high gloss, lacquer is about as easy as it gets. Thin 1:1 and use an airbrush. Put down enough to get itto flow together and repeat every 15 minutes for about 4 hours.

[CarveOne]

He does want a high gloss. I have an old Badger airbrush and a compressor for it but I'm sure that we'll not go that route. I should probably get one of the newer HPLV spray systems for woodworkers. I'm open to suggestions but he'll most likely use spray cans if he does the finish work himself (as he wants to do). The weave and star areas can't easily be sanded after lacquer layers are applied, so they will just build up.

[kuroguy]

I use a pasche H which is an external mix airbrush with a coarse head. It's similar to a badger 250 or 350. I have a HVLP and prefer the pasche H. It just does a better job and is much easier to control than a spray can.

[CarveOne]

All of my CNC projects have been a combination of spray can only, brushed only, or brushed with a spray can final layer. I have a detail spray gun that I might consider using. My shop has a new Ingersoll Rand 5hp 80 gallon 2 stage air compressor with in-line pressure regulator, water trap, and airline filter/drier. The guy I made this for has an automotive paint job setup that is better than mine, so I'll let him decide how he wants to do the finish. He is not much of a woodworker, and I'm no expert on wood finishes for outdoor environments, which is the reason for questioning the use of Deft lacquer for the instrument panel.

[Trotline]

That is just gorgeous. Guy's gonna flip.

Luke

[CarveOne]

That is just gorgeous. Guy's gonna flip.

Luke

He's seen it but I'm waiting to hear what his wife says about it. They came over last evening and saw the simulation in Aspire. Then she got a tour of the work shop, display wall samples, and the machines. They both flipped out when I turned on the smaller machine and told them it's not just a one trick pony and played Stairway to Heaven on the step motors. He gave his wife, daughter, and daughter-in-law one of my Paradise boxes last spring.

[revwarguy]

That panel looks really great, C1. The weave really makes it unique. I've cut several instrument panels for airplanes now, .092 aluminum usually. I've always wanted to do one that had S and C scrollwork, like gun engraving, around all the instruments and switches, like this:

Attachment 219330

I would try to integrate switch labels into it and as much as possible do it with just v-carving, since I wonder if ball type cutters in aluminum would last long enough to complete the job!

What tool/technique will you use to clean up the fuzzies on the walnut weave?

PS Could you pretty please do a video of the Stairway to Heaven demo? I am stunned that you can get a stepper to sound like Robert Plant, although one of mine came close once when it cut into a clamp!

[CarveOne]

Here is a .zip file that contains the .midi file that will play on most media players now. Play that first. There is an included .txt file that runs on my smaller CNC machine. In that text file is the url to a website that lets you create a gcode file for your specific machine. Click on "Interesting Facts/CNC Milling Machine - Music" to upload the .midi file and set up the parameters for your gear ratios and other settings and then download the resulting gcode file. It's a free site. There are other interesting things to look at there.

If you run my gcode file it probably won't sound right unless you use direct drive 5 start ACME screws as I do. It plays the full 8 minutes and anything mechanical can hit resonance with some of the notes. My lead screws are mostly what vibrates. This isn't high quality music at all, but the fact that the motors can do this at all is most impressive.

To run the .txt file, copy it to your CNC computer and open it in Mach3. Move your x,y,z axes to mid travel and zero them in Mach3. When you run the gcode be prepared to stop movement if any axis moves more than a few inches in any direction. It should just start moving around a little while making noises. The Z axis travel might be +/- 2" or less. Insure that the Z axis doesn't run into a hard stop or limit switch.

Anything that resonates can be toned down with a little dampening pressure with a finger tip to the right place as long as it's safe to do it.

I have another file that is set up for my big machine with CNCRP nema23 r&p drives. If your machine is similar the file may run on it ok.

[CarveOne]

That panel looks really great, C1. The weave really makes it unique. I've cut several instrument panels for airplanes now, .092 aluminum usually. I've always wanted to do one that had S and C scrollwork, like gun engraving, around all the instruments and switches, like this:

Attachment 219330

I would try to integrate switch labels into it and as much as possible do it with just v-carving, since I wonder if ball type cutters in aluminum would last long enough to complete the job!

What tool/technique will you use to clean up the fuzzies on the walnut weave?

PS Could you pretty please do a video of the Stairway to Heaven demo? I am stunned that you can get a stepper to sound like Robert Plant, although one of mine came close once when it cut into a clamp!

Chip carvings and engravings like on this revolver can be cut nicely with a Vcarve tool path if you can convert them to clean vectors without a lot of node editing. It would be a real chore to trace this engraving manually from a high resolution image. Search Google for "Gun Engraving line art" or something similar. "Line art" in the search term is good for finding some better images to work with. Once you capture the various scrolls and other details you can copy, paste, scale, reshape, and move the scrolls to fit the layout that you want to CNC engrave.

I use a new #11 Xacto blade in a hobby knife handle to cut and scrape off as much of the fuzzies as I can. A brass or steel wire brush can make short work of getting bad cases like this one cleaned out. I use the cheap set from Harbor Freight that has plastic handles. The last little bit can be cleaned up with with small pieces of sand paper inside the weaves. It's a lot of work though. This is the worst case I've had to deal with so far. No rotary wheel or brush I've tried has done much other than remove wood I don't want to remove.

The midi music file doesn't have any of Robert's voice, just notes created by artificial instruments. Quality can be good with some midi instruments - or very poor compared to stringed instruments.

I'm not really interested in making a video ast this time due to too many other things to do. I'll help if you have trouble using the midi to gcode converter on that site. I last worked with it around December of 2012. It's still there waiting to be used though. Other midi to gcode converters I tried either didn't work or gave really poor conversions. Some midi files just do not convert well either.

[revwarguy]

Chip carvings and engravings like on this revolver can be cut nicely with a Vcarve tool path if you can convert them to clean vectors without a lot of node editing. It would be a real chore to trace this engraving manually from a high resolution image.

Since I would be starting with a custom panel, there wouldn't be any image to trace unless I hand drew it; I would start with outlining all the holes and labels and then lay out all of the scrolls in the blank open areas myself in Aspire. With some of the curve tools Aspire has it could be done - a lot of work, but it would be a beaut!

No rotary wheel or brush I've tried has done much other than remove wood I don't want to remove.

I tried that too, even using some of the specialty dremel tools that I saw on Vectic's forum, but I am still on the lookout for a better way than brushes and hand sanding.

The midi music file doesn't have any of Robert's voice, just notes created by artificial instruments.

Just pullin your leg a bit, C1.

[CarveOne]

I traced another Celtic cross line art this morning and made a few changes to it. The conversion in Aspire made badly pixelated "lines". The beauty of Aspire's extrude tool is that you only need to draw arcs and lines down the center of the lines because the extrude tool only needs the centerline vector and one other shape vector like a half circle to extrude the Celtic weave shape. I wish Aspire could also convert edges to single centerlines instead of just the double lines that are more suited to Vcarvings. It automatically knows how to make the vector crossings create the weaving effect. Adding a node in the appropriate places allows moving the arcs to stay properly centered.

The weave pattern on this instrument panel is about 7/8" wide. The weave is about .1" wide and the square openings in the weave pattern is about 1/8" square. The weave height is about 0.1" high. That's a fairly tight weave pattern. What do you think of Celtic weave on 1911A grips instead of checkering? I can do it ...

My right leg is 6" longer than the left leg due to being pulled on so much over the years. Done got used to it. Stairway to Heaven is probably my all-time favorite song and I really wanted to do the conversion for CNC. Except for the buzzes and rattles my machine makes it couldn't have been a better one to convert. It sounds better on my big machine due to much less resonances.. There are midi file sites with lots of choices to play with.

[CarveOne]

See, I told ya. This is too thick for now at 0.35" but it's a start. Shows that it can be done.

[bill south]

Nice work carve! The dash panel is going to be an eye catcher. Be sure and have your customer provide us with oohs and ahhhs photos when it's finished. I don't know about you but when I'm working on a customer's expensive piece of wood, my butt stays puckered until the last cut is made! Murphy haunts all of my machines.
Thanks for posting.
Bill

[CarveOne]

I will Bill. The owner has said it would be ok with him. The guys over on the Vectric forums want some photos of the installation and the car also.

[CarveOne]

revwarguy,

I drew some of the vectors based on your revolver photo just to see how the Vcarved scrolls would look. This is no means an accurate tracing but it shows what it can look like. The gaps between the scrolls and the screw location circles need to be wide enough to allow the cutter to leave a reasonable looking shallow groove for the cut depth limit you set. For this exercise I didn't set a depth limit.

Update: I checked the tool path setup again and the new file I started already has -0.15" set as the depth limit.

[TOTALLYRC]

Beautiful.
Makes me want to get my machine back up and running.

Mike

[CarveOne]

Beautiful.
Makes me want to get my machine back up and running.

Mike

Thanks Mike, and yes, you ought to.

Each thing I try recreating is a new learning experience. I've become pretty good with the node edit tool. It's still a lot of work but it's usually worth it.

[Khalid]

Once completed...Honorable CarveOne would you please share this beautiful carving vector

[TOTALLYRC]

Thanks Mike, and yes, you ought to.

Each thing I try recreating is a new learning experience. I've become pretty good with the node edit tool. It's still a lot of work but it's usually worth it.

I am going great gangbusters on getting to the point I can finish the router upgrade. POssibly this weekend.