Seems the more mistakes I make, the more I learn. So I guess that means I am learning a lot. Once again I started with an image built in Photoshop…
Based on lessons learned in my two previous projects I thought this would be easy. I started with a 7.25” x 7.25” piece of wood, the plan was to cut out some letters and in a deeper cut added a company logo. “What could go wrong?” I think that should be my new battle-cry.
The major lesson learned during this project was how to “not” machine the top layer of the wood. I thought I could rely on MeshCAM’s “Don’t Machine Top of Stock” feature, but I learned that does not work when you start with an image. You can see my post here here, but the following image shows what happened…
For my next attempt I tried defining “Machining Regions” to limit the area. The upside to using the “Machining Regions” is that it reduced the time it took…
However my next attempt produced different results…
What I failed to notice is that this wood (unlike the flooring samples I used in my previous projects one and two) was not PERFECTLY flat. So when I zeroed the Z height in the lower left corner, I didn’t notice that the wood was ever so slightly bent, making the top edge roughly 1mm higher than the bottom edge.
So once again I started over, and after mounting a new piece of wood I used the Carbide Motion program to check the Z height on each corner. What I discovered was there was a 2mm difference between the lowest corner and the highest corner. So I adjusted the original design making all of the cuts 1 mm deeper, but then set the Z height to the highest point. My thinking was this would keep the bit above the wood except for those areas I wanted to cut down. And since the design was asking to cut 1mm deeper the result may work out.
So as I write this the Nomad is working on the next attempt, but I’m already considering this project a success because 10 minutes with a basic Black and Decker sander has fixed the previous attempt…
