Reporting back on Graphite carving:
I did my first attempt yesterday and it went great. While I will want to modify my design some, it worked spectacularly:
Roughing pass, done at 60 inches/minute at 1/16"pass depth with 1/4" end mill
Finishing pass done at 30 inches/minute with 1/8" ball nose. It needs some slight sanding bit looked great!
First glass casting attempts worked perfectly!
I see a lot of tweaks I’m going to do for subsequent carves, but am very happy. I’m also very excited about doing custom cast glass time designs!
In regards to graphite dust: the Kent CNC dust shoe (I broke down and bought one instead of making my own due to time constraints)/ Dust Deputy/shop vac solution worked perfectly! With sawdust there was a lot more dust flying everywhere, but the fine graphite dust was 99% sucked up and there was next to no mess at all.
Charles- I bought my graphite on Ebay, but I’m just buying small blocks. Not sure about sources for large sheets.