first wedding plaque

Dan Noren

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this will keep my out of mischief for a couple of days. this is for some friends of ours who are getting married on the 17th. they are already married in a civil ceremony, but doing it again in the church. after checking, he preferred the date of the civil ceremony.
 

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here we go: i don't happen to have the big clearing bits, so i'm using a 1/8" dia flat bottomed milling bit for the clearing out of waste. the over all size that is being worked on is 7.25" x 19.25" (a fair amount of space). the top lettering milling will take about 7 hrs 20 min, at 50 in/min, the bottom lettering milling will take about 6 hrs 25 min, at 50 in/min. that is with 4 passes each, each finishing up at a 1/8" depth, with an over all finished depth for the bottom lettering at 1/4" deep. as beech is just a touch softer (and not by much) than red oak, i'm even thinking about dialing it back to 30-35 in/min.
 
Any reason to not invest in a bigger bit for clearing out the pockets?

Would a bigger bit reduce the total run time?
 
Well, a tight budget for one. The wife wants me to hold off on any purchases for a while. That, and after adding the extra toolpaths, it only reduced the time by about ten minutes.
 
Well, a tight budget for one. The wife wants me to hold off on any purchases for a while. That, and after adding the extra toolpaths, it only reduced the time by about ten minutes.

Have you looked at bits from MLCS? Here's an option for 1/4" flat cutting bit. I've been using spiral bits that I got for my router table and they work great!

Going from a 1/8" end mill to a 1/4" should reduce the time quite a bit since you can use a 1/8" DOC and it will make wider cuts.
 
yayyy! got a reprieve! i found one at rockler (not as nicely priced as at the site you referred bill), and my wife :blah: has agreed to buy it for me. now to rerig the tool paths to hog out with the new bit, and tidy up with the 1/8" bit.
 
yayyy! got a reprieve! i found one at rockler (not as nicely priced as at the site you referred bill), and my wife :blah: has agreed to buy it for me. now to rerig the tool paths to hog out with the new bit, and tidy up with the 1/8" bit.

That should help your times somewhat.

How will you tidy up with the 1/8"? Set another toolpath to take something like 0.005" or so?
 
yup, take the quarter inch bit as close as i can without bothering the lettering area, clearing out the waste, with a pocket. then, with the eighth inch bit, and a pocket just inside the limit of the first pocket, for overlap, then do the cleanup around the lettering. i'm even thinking about a cleanup pass around the lettering with the 1/6" bits that i have, just to see what will happen, hopefully to clean up the inside corners of the lettering a bit.
 
yup, take the quarter inch bit as close as i can without bothering the lettering area, clearing out the waste, with a pocket. then, with the eighth inch bit, and a pocket just inside the limit of the first pocket, for overlap, then do the cleanup around the lettering. i'm even thinking about a cleanup pass around the lettering with the 1/6" bits that i have, just to see what will happen, hopefully to clean up the inside corners of the lettering a bit.

One thing I learned from the Vectric forum is to file a small flat - 1/32" or less - on the tip of the v-bit you use for carving these things. It doesn't affect the quality of the v-carving but does eliminate the grooves formed by the point of a v-bit. The only problem I've had is remembering to change to a sharp v-bit to do shallow v-carving. I'm gonna have to mark my bits with paint dabs, I guess!!
 
well, after screwing up the blank another 2 times, it will have to hold off until next spring. part of the problem is for some reason with this one, is problems controlling the z axis. for some reason, even with the movement amount limited to .001", the spindle would fly up to the top when sending it back to zero. another thing was setting the zero for the 1/4" mill. that, and getting surprised that even with a slow feed rate, 20 ipm, it sounded like it was dragging the bit through the wood. when i tried to set it up again, it went to an entirely different area. seems that this is a project with problems. solved the over extension of the bit tonight. i marked where the bottom of the collet was when the bit bottomed out in the spindle. then checked it against the 1/8" end mill, and then had pop take his grinder, and lopped off the extra (off the non cutting end of course), now i have a bit that is slightly longer than the others, that will have about an inch and a half exposed for cutting, rather than the almost two and a half inches before. that and a reduced even further feed rate, and shallower cut depths should help out some.
 

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Have you looked at bits from MLCS?...

Just a heads-up about MLCS. I've bought products from them, and they've been great quality for the price. That said, they either sold, gave away, or had stolen from them my email address, and I started getting so much spam to that address that I disabled it. (I use a different email address for every vendor or website I do business with. That allows me to see who is selling my address.) ;)
 
... That said, they either sold, gave away, or had stolen from them my email address, and I started getting so much spam to that address that I disabled it. (I use a different email address for every vendor or website I do business with. That allows me to see who is selling my address.) ;)

I've never had that problem. I've used the same email for several vendors and that's all I hear from on them. Guess I've been real lucky for the past 20 years.
 
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