This is coming to a waste board near me very soon!
MATCHFIT Dovetail Hardware Variety Pack
Cheers,
Craig
This is coming to a waste board near me very soon!
MATCHFIT Dovetail Hardware Variety Pack
Cheers,
Craig
Interesting and looks good. Let us know how it goes!
Good luck with this and thanks for sharing. I have and like MicroJig and have several of their tools. For this application, you’ll need a certain dovetail bit (which they also sell). It would also seem that for this idea to be the most versatile, you would have to cut a lot of “slots” close together. I’m a woodworker also and cutting these parallel slots could be somewhat of a challenge. But, there are videos out there.
What I did was to buy “t-slot” aluminum channels from E-Bay. Then, I cut “spacers” from MDF about 2 3/4 inches wide. See picture. But, I really am not using this! It just seems too hard to successfully clamp and apply “downward” and “lateral” pressure to the blank at the same time to hold it.
What I generally do now is to screw a piece of 3/4 MDF on top of the t-slots (which are screwed to the stock X-Carve wasteboard). With the sacrificial piece of MDF, I can either replace it or fill the holes with wood filler and sand.
In addition, if I’m doing a number of “like” carves, I take the time to add screw inserts, usually 1/4-20, to the MDF. Then, when I design the item to be carved, like a coaster, I just make the blank oversize and come in 1/2 to 3/4 inch on each corner and drill 1/4-20 clearance holes. With a CNC program (I use VCarve), it’s easy to drill the holes in the MDF the correct size for the inserts without going to the drill press. I don’t usually use a screw in the lower left corner since that’s my 0,0,0. If the piece is “warped”, I add the screw and just change my short Z axis cal macro to move off the corner to the right enough to use Charley’s calibration block. I never cal in X or Y since I set the X and Y limit switches to the approximate corner for homing. This works for me
Amazing! Looks truly versatile. I may steal some of your ideas
If you decide to use the MicroJig method, I’m assuming you’ll use MDF. Reason is that after installation on the CNC, you’ll have to “surface plane” to ensure a level bed. Plywood wouldn’t surface very well.
I’ve found that clamping has been almost as big of a challenge as the CNC itself. I had made some clamps with my 3D printer. Some, I’ve discarded. Others, like for clamping thin material, like 1/8th inch Baltic birch, worked well. My challenge now is to clamp “round” blanks. I had made and cut out some coasters but the lettering didn’t paint well. So, I’m trying to “re-purpose”. Success in life is wonderful, but, even in failure, lessons are learned.