So I’ve had the XXL for a while, but haven’t done anything complicated at all. For the spirit of Halloween, I’ve decided to develop my skills with a seasonally appropriate project using 2" foam (which will also help keep bits safe from my misdeeds.) Tombstones.
I’ve made a more complicated design based on 2" foam designed entirely in CC - Do you see any issues before I throw it under the mill (aside from this simple, fun project now involving multiple tool changes, etc). I’d say that it’s good thing foam is cheap, but a single 4x8 sheet is nearly $40!
One question… how long are your end mills? If you’re using the standard 1/4" endmill, you’re going to drive your router into the top of the foam when you’re cutting through 2" of material, as your stick-out is only about 1 1/2".
Alternatively, you could use thinner material and redesign so you can laminate pieces together to get the thickness you want. The nice thing about foam is that you can be sure the surface will mate together well with a bit of construction adhesive.
Yes - Totally correct. I never got that far as noticed it was getting close too tall to probe with just 1" foam. I’ll use 2 layers of 1" with the back layer just being simple cut outs.
Another issue has been carving the small epitaph. I originally was going to v-carve this text, but decided to minimize operations and just use the .125 bit. Unfortunately the text is too thin to pocket, so I decided to look into single-line fonts, installed Hershey into inkscape, changed object to path and saved as an SVG and I end up with only partial letters.
It seems CC cannot carve single line fonts.
Edit: I installed CamBam fonts and these are working out of the box.
So, I started the 1/4 pocket and after the first .21 pass it drops another .14 for the first .35 portion of the first toolpath. It got maybe 10 circular passes around that .35 depth cut and just stopped in its tracks, no error in CM.
I had to leave it, so what should I look into to address Monday. Never had this issue before.
