are you meaning on the top and bottom surface? or the edge?
Well all three actually. I’d like to limit how much sanding I’ll be doing. I’ve never used compression bits before. I know they start out with an up cut and then switch to down cut but I don’t know how good of a finish they provide. That bit I assume you use as your finish bit to get your tight corner radius?
yeah so the compression will give your that nice finish on top and bottom
Ok, thank you
where is the link?
Phil, Aren’t those up cut end mills?
Workin, I looked at the SPEKTRA end mill you gave me the link to. That has a cutting area of 13/16". So I can’t do a single final pass in 1" work material. That also would require two passes correct?
Well yeah when you sent me the file they were .8125" thick so I thought that one might work
you might be able to push that one to 1" but it will probably rub just a tad
on the x-carve I would still break up the finishing pass in 2 or 3 steps just to play it safe
yeah I guess I didnt see that on that cobra tool you can select the 4" tool and it will cut up to 1 1/8" and yeah its an upcut but if you clearance out the cut using that upcut should not be a problem
I gotta ask man and don’t take offense but why are the tight radius needed so bad on that part?
No offense taken. I don’t know that they are that important. They are retirement plaques for Deputy Sheriff’s. The guy that used to make them used to make them on a band saw and hand held router. He is now at an age that his health is such that he can no longer do woodworking. I was approached to make them and they want 20 of them to start. I thought since I have an XCarve, I could simplify things and I just wanted to make them with the same tight radius as the ones the guy was making on a band saw. It’s important because that’s how I would like to make them and I don’t want them to say…“oh, they aren’t like the other ones”. This will be an ongoing job so I want to start out on the right foot so to speak. Similar to how you make your Hearts and Wings the way you do because that’s how you want to do it.
yeah no I understand and I run into that sometimes but really anymore I just come to realize that I can’t make something that a band saw or scroll saw can
I know you probably what to make money on this job and sometimes fighting over small things like that can really through your profits out the window.
I know when i am faced with that I just sit my customer down show them a sample and explain to them the difference and why it needs to be that way and 9/10 times they are more than happy and you can explain to them that your products are going to be far more consistent than someone hand making them you could make 1 or a 1000 and they will all look the same
this is just me but I would grab a cheap material like 1/4" mdf and cut out a sample and show it to them and ask if you can do it that way
I mean that one tool I showed you was 50.00 and imagine if you load it up forget a setting and break it in 2 seconds there goes all your profits right down the drain and your still on the hook for the pending order if you use a 1/4" tool you know its not going to break and in your spare time you can experiment
I mostly like to experiment when I am not on the hook for a job that needs to get out of the door unless I have told the customer that up front
to date I have never not delivered a job but to tell you the truth I I have come so close as to having the phone in my hand dialing the customer to let them know I could not do it. and it was because of things like we are discussing here I was wasting more material and tools than I was getting paid in a bad way
you know what I mean
I completely understand. I’m fortunate that I’m retired. I have a pension. I make and sell things to buy more wood so I can make and sell more things. Woodworking has been my stress reliever for years. It’s never been a “Job” to me. When it starts to feel like work, I’ll stop doing it. With that being said, I’m also somewhat of a perfectionist. My head gets stuck on an issue and I won’t let it go until I have a solution. That trait has not been a good one to have with this journey into the world of CNC. Fortunately I have this forum and the Vectric forum to become educated. I think I will take your advice and make one out of MDF using a 1/4" End mill and see what it looks like and then make my decision on how I’ll make them after seeing the results. I need to learn how to say “Good Nuf”.
I do wonder though about the End Mills that are available. Why is it so hard to find down cut or compression cut End Mills that have a large cutting length but easy to find up cut bits with larger cutting lengths more commonly used in material like plastics and aluminum? I wonder, not because of this project per se as I’ve seen many posts about long length of cut End Mills. There’s an awful lot of people carving wood so I would think there would be a market. I also see many people are doing the mod to increase the height of their X axis to accommodate thicker material but what’s the point if cutting 1" thick material if it’s such a pain to accomplish?
Oh yeah no its good to be a perfectionist with the cnc I mean the cnc is all about precision and your just really doing it for fun so your not limited by certain things
So the metal endmills verse cnc bits and the issue you speak of is because of I think the application they are made for most tool makers design cnc bits to run at 600-2500ipm and there are only so many different thicknesses of stock that most people mill so manufactures get you closets to those nominal sizes as possible
in metal working most machines are alot slower and really the stock sizes are different so tool manufactures design those tools differently
most metal cutting endmills will work for wood but they are not specifically designed for it and may have a different end result but they will certainly cut wood plus another reason is that most metal mills are super ridgid machine and when you have a machine that is super rigid you can get away with a little more
so cnc routing 1" stock is not really hard just a different approach needs to be taken. If you call professional cnc router shops you will find even people that have 200k machines will limit them to .75 stock just because its the most common
on the x-carve that you have things get a little more tricky on thick material just because the machine is not very powerful and flexible
Here is a job I did on my x-carve for a customer a few months after I got it and its 1.5" thick alder and poplar
They make mortise compressions in .25" shank