[paulried]

HomeCNC emailed me the 4 tool paths that cut the crest on his home made machine. I wanted to see how a Cheap-CNC matched up. I think the part looks great! It took much longer on the Cheap-CNC but then again, it only gets around 12 IPM so that was to be expected.

The first two tool paths were roughing passes

28 minutes for the first
22 minutes for the second

The final two paths were finish passes.

Pass #3 with an 1/8" ball nose took 3 hrs 37 minutes
Pass #4 with a 1/16" ball nose tool 18 hrs 26 minutes!

I must agree with HomeCNC in that the 4th pass was not really needed as the detail after pass #3 was almost identical to the forth.

[paulried]

To give you an idea of size, here is another photo with the machine

[cncadmin]

Wow very nice, but boy that sure took a long time!

[paulried]

Your telling me! I think it took HomeCNC around 8 hrs. The last pass is the killer as the cutter overlap is verrrrrryyyyyyy high. Fun to try, but definitely would not be a money maker for a living!

[HomeCNC]

Yes, I have refined the process and I now know the largest pass for each ball cutter that still looks good. Also I have determined that the size of the part will dictate the use of the 1/16 cutter. My second crest run was larger and I stopped with the 1/8 tool but passed the 1/16 tool over only the artwork in the middle. In the second crest I used a dragon instead of a griffen. The complete time to make the second crest was 10 hours and it was 9" X 14" and a much deeper relief than before. It looks great!

[paulried]

Photo of the new one?!?

[HomeCNC]

Hang on I will take one!

[HomeCNC]

Here is the second go around with my machine.

[paulried]

Now that looks sweet!

Are you using them for something or just playing? They would make great doors for a dart board set in an Irish Pub! Yes it has been a long day.

[balsaman]

Cool,

What kind of wood is that?

Eric

[HomeCNC]

I am making them as demo cuts. My partner is taking them around to cabinet shops to see if we can drum up work.

The wood is African Ribbin Mahog. My friend works at a nice door shop and got some scrap for me to play with.

[hardmill]

Nice work gentlemen.
PEACE

[Laff Riot]

Hit up your local kitchen fabricators as well. They always use a lot of custom eye candy work in Corian and certain woods.
If someones about to drop 30k on a brand new kitchen 3k of custom trim or initials is nothing. The Corian is especially nice since you can surface fill and resand back to a gloss smooth finish.

- - - - -

Also - hit your local sign shops for thier cutout letter requirements.
I can lend you a hand on initial prices for various materials if this interests you. As a side note - the prev. metal letter job I mentioned, we calculated that they have about 9k of profit built into the job. Sometimes its nice to have a big settup

- - - - -

Dont forget your custom closet & storage manufacturers as well - they are always looking for signature add-ons to differentiate them from the other shops. The bonus is that they are usually already paying top dollar for everything else.

[anoel]

Geez, 10 hours seems like an awfully long time to cut a relief. It seems like it'd be waful hard to make a living doing that. Seems that your machine could handle a pretty deep stepdown. How many passes in Z are you making per tool before reaching final depth? Did you try increasing the stepover until you started getting scalloping and then back it off a bit?

I'd much rather have a little scalloping and maybe a 1.5hr cut time and clean up with a cabinet scraper and sandpaper than wait 10 hrs for a finish pass. After all it is decorative and not a precision part that mates with another.

Assuming that $100 per hour on the mahine (Which is probably way cheap compared to most commercial CNC shops.) $1000 per relief is not going to attract many customers.

10 hrs is not bad for a one time precision mold. And in that case I'd want the most detail I could get. But 10 Hr panels would drive me crazy.

[HuFlungDung]

Or, get OnecncXp and use the "REST machining" function to detect only those areas that need machining with a smaller cutter. Make time on the broad surfaces.

I know that might be a bit more than you would like to spend for software, but if you were serious about making the jobs profitable, it would certainly be something to consider. Just wanted you to know the options that are available.

[ger21]

>>I'd much rather have a little scalloping and maybe a 1.5hr cut time and clean up with a cabinet scraper and sandpaper than wait 10 hrs for a finish pass. After all it is decorative and not a precision part that mates with another.


That thing is only about 8" tall. What can you do with a cabinet scraper on something that small?

Gerry

[HomeCNC]

The speed problem is with the controller I am using. I am useing CNCPro until Mach 2 is ready. Also ArtCam is outputing many small point to point lines in the code and CNCPro is slowing down to process this data. It will only run at about 20 IPM but changes between 12-30 IPM while the finish cut is going. CNCPro only has a 2 line look ahead which does not help with a large program like this. I am hopeful that mach 2 will be able to look ahead much more and make a smoother and faster run of the part.

[ninewgt]

What did you generate that part in originally anyway - I mean what software ?? I have some things I'd like to make for our boats that would be simular 3-d engraving, but 'outdoor' type fishing images ? Anything you may suggest would be appreciated.
By the way - my software I have is :

Auto Cad Light
Maxsurf (3-D NURB / B spline surface development)
Mini-Cad
Visual Mill Basic
Photoshop


Thanks guys -

HomeCNC - -By the way - your part looks great - 'cheap' CNC or not - VERY nice.....

[HomeCNC]

Ninewgt, The model came as a sample with Artcam pro. Since my post in early June I now have a small probe scanner for making models with. It is neer to impossible to create something like the crest by using the tools inside of the software. I can tell that the crest model was scanned as well.

My scanning size is 8" x 12" x 2.375". I had a request for a buck deer bust carving that was almost facing you so you can see the rack of the deer. I found a small deer at the local hunting store and scanned it. I then made some small mods and then sent it to the CNC router. It looked real good enlarged to about 10" X 18".

[anoel]

What kind of Probe did you use? I've been contemplating a Microscribe arm digitizer for a couple of years now. I could use it for a lot of the 3D graphics work that I goof around with as well as the CNC stuff that I'm hooked on.

You can do some pretty cool stuff using greyscale images and the relief features in ArtCAM, I've goofed around with it a bit and it's a pretty impressive program. I really like the V-Bit carving feature.

I did some contouring and pocketing with it also before the demo expired on me and it's toolpaths seemed to be very nicely optimized for program generated toolpaths, at least they were better than the DeskCNC created toolpaths for the same parts. I've not tried any relief carving with it though. I don't think that it's possible any detailed 3d carving can not be incredibly bloated though, so I don't suspect that artcam is any worse than most.

Oh, and Pics of the Deer carving if you would please....