Hello
Has anyone encountered the need to carve on both sides of a material?
Is there a way of maybe coding easel to carve on one side then turning the material to carve on the second (flip) side, I know the trouble comes on aligning the X and Y positions. has someone thought of this??
Haven’t done it with Easel just with Fusion360, but its quite simple to do the flip, you just need 2 stops or a corner stop, that’s it. Make sure that the flip side is reversed as in easel you cant change the work origin.
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As far as I know, we have good friend located in New Zealand name is Jeremy Richards. He is very much mastered for two sided phone covers with easel.
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Cristian
can you elaborate especially when dealing with an irregularly shaped material,
Well, you have to either keep your material regular until after the flip or use locating pins if you can. If thats not an option then you can do a fixture carving out the negative of the irregular piece.
These videos will give you a better idea of how to do it.
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Best way to flip a part in 3D space is some kind of alignment dowels. You’ll need a minimum of 2, but 4 is better. Just add the holes in your design and make sure they are perfectly mirrored across the center of what you’re trying to cut. Then make sure these holes are in the exact same place in both your top and bottom drawings and you’ll be good to go. You’ll need to drill those hole locations with the X-carve into your spoil board after you mill the first side of your project. Then add pins, flip your part, and set it on the pins. Perfect alignment.
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thank you
I get the concept of using alignment pins reflected on either side of a centre line, to aid in the precision cutting of the other side. Also setting the start point to centre instead of bottom left. What I don’t understand is, how do you home your spindle to the correct location accurately every single time, so that it cuts from that centre line on the Y axis?
When making a two piece guitar body, with a centre line where the bookmatched halves are glued, how do you consistently set the centre/mirror line to fall exactly on that body centre line? Once you’ve set it I guess flipping it is easy, as you can use last home position and everything should line up. Just not sure how you accurately start it off.
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So the way you start this is by setting a home position on your machine. It can be anywhere in the space really. Set your XY-0 and run a drilling operation on your spoilboard. This will be the same hole positions that you’re using in your drawing that are mirrored across center. If you’d like to make it even easier, engrave your centerline as well on your spoilboard. Then line up your actual piece on the centerline, run the same exact drilling pass again, but on your blank. Make sure to reset your Z-0 before hand. Once that’s drilled, put in some dowels, flip it and key it into the holes drilled in the spoilboard, drill your holes again on the other side of the blank and then you’re ready to start all other routing. As long as you don’t reset your XY-0, you can use the keys to flip reliably. If you have to shut off the machine before you finish routing, all you need to do is recut the holes in your spoilboard and continue. I hope that all makes sense.
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Over on the Carbide3d site, there is this:
While it is designed to the Nomad’s base, it seems to me that it could be used in any setup. Doesn’t seem to be different in concept from the above suggestions, just in a pre-made jig form.
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You can home your spindle to the correct location every single time by using homing switches.
You can then move the spindle accurately every single time to your bookmatch glue seam by using a G28 or G30 command (a programmed distance from the home position).
To precisely locate the spindle to the bookmatch seam (if it were me) I’d use a really sharp v-bit, like the one used for calibrating the steps/mm.
Search the forum for homing switches, home position, machine position, and work position. I think LarryM had a good explanation for that if I’m not mistaken.
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I will have to check out G28 and G30 commands, that sounds like exactly what I need.
I was thinking the same thing about a v-bit, but to align the spindle with an engraved centreline on my spoilboard. If my blank design has the dowel positions incorporated in it, then it should be the same centre line every time.
Thanks for the help!
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