Cut another clock this morning, this time in pine.
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Thank you very much. I designed it myselfâŚIâve already sold a couple of them.
Where do you buy your clock components?
I am using the ones belowâŚseem to work wellâŚI have had one in a clock for a few months now and it is still accurate.
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My very first cut. I need to flaten the waste board but i gotta say feels pretty awesome to have this thing up and running
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@Devin - were the ridges on the bottom of the cut intended? If not, I suspect youâre using a ball-end mill versus a flat cutter. That would result in the ridges between stepover of the bit when cuttingâŚ
just an FYI from my own experience⌠I did several cuts and was getting annoyed by the ridges, until I realized Iâd used a ball-end instead of the 2 flute down-cut flat bit I THOUGHT I was using 
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I used a 2 flute 1/8" upcut spiral fish tail. Is what the bit package said. I bet down cut is better. And not sure what they mean by âfish tailâ but i bet that had something to do with it. This is my first cut. So i was just excited to carve. Basically grabbed the closest bit to me. It turned out good enough for my test. Also thats why i put some black paint on it to hide the ridges. Eaither way the wife is impressed. She finnally understands what the machine does. The whole time i was building it she kept asking me what this thing is for. I could never really explain it but now she sees the potential.
Fish tail and down cut bits good for profile cut. Try regular spiral bit with strait tip. Youâll have cleaner pockets.
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Yeah - same here. My wife didnât understand and I couldnât put it in terms she would get. As soon as my first cut was complete the light bulb went on for her, and now she already has a list of a dozen plus projects she wants done on it.
Iâm actually planning to buy her an XCarve of her own in 500x500 for her craft roomâŚ
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Lol. You guys were exactly right. I just looked at it. It is ball nose. It wouldnt let me upload a pic for some reason. Good call guys. Like i said. I was so excited i didnt even care what bit i grabbed. I just had to see this thing finnally cut. It has been a long journey.
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is the Z axis mod much stiffer then the original?
Not really. In terms of rigidity, it is similar to the original design. The motion is much smoother and it gives me a lot more Z-Axis height.
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One thing to keep in mind, I was having no issues with my original Z-Axis. It worked very well. I used nylock nuts and eccentric washers so I never had to adjust those. My acme rod had no play and the pulleys were rock solid.
I made the switch for more Z-Axis movement. As it turned out, the new setup with 4 delrin nuts and the 9mm belt and pulleys makes for super smooth movement.
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Did a couple of small relief carvesâŚThis is fresh off of the machineâŚnow I need to design a back for the coins.
1/4" cherry, 2 inch coin.
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These are gorgeous. What did you use for a bit to carve these?
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Thank you.
I used a 0.125" / 1/8" end mill to rough then a tapered ball nose with a 0.25mm radius tip for the finish pass.
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First attempt v carving. I really like the v carve software. Comes with really good tutorials. This took about 5 mins to design. Less than 20mins to cut. Feed 50in/min. Dial 1 on dewalt 611 for rpm. 90° 1/2" v bit. I was amazed how good it turned out for the first go. I was nervious importing the g code straight from v carve into easle but that was easy also. I just made sure to read over the raw g code to make sure it wasnt going to plung or 100 in/min or something.
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I am going to be making a few boxes in the near future, so I decided to make the box clamping jig provided by the maker of the FingerMaker program. The clamping jig is a V-Carve file located here: http://www.tailmaker.net/clamping-jig.html
The clamping jig is pretty niceâŚget it close to the box size and insert the wooden pegs, drop the box in and tighten the bolts to put on the pressure. It allows you to change the pressure points for the clamping pressure. My corner clamps put pressure on the corners, this one letâs you move the pressure to inside the joint to really draw the box joints together.
I actually made 2 of these so I can glue up 2 boxes at once.
Here it is just cut out of 3/4" plywood.
All the tabs removed and the parts separated with the hardware.
The jig assembled.
And with a box in itâŚI cut the box, but I need to sand a bit before it gets glued up.
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