A couple of scent vessels turned into a bunch

[Bison52 (Michael Vinson)]

Started out making a couple of scentwork vessels for Olivia (my Golden Retriever) and my scentwork class’s present exchange. Wound up making a bunch. Only issue is drilling the holes. Ended up just drilling a shallow marker spot and drilling them out by hand.

The material is BAM-X, a bamboo plywood. Machines well but the 1/8 end mill screamed like crazy no matter what feeds and speeds I tried. The other bits like an 1/2 inch bowl bit and an 1/8 inch roigh weren’t much better.

Anybody else have any experience with this stuff?

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

Are you cutting slots as narrow as the tool significantly deeper than the diameter of the tool?

Where possible avoid slotting and add geometry and cut as a pocket

Making vacuum hose adapters

While cutting up vacuum extension wands for this is expedient, it’s a bit problematic given that Shop Vac recently filed for bankruptcy, was bought at the last minute, and production hasn’t caught up. I need a receptacle for the Sweepy 2.0 dust fitting — one option would be to purchase one from Woodcraft, but Carbide 3D sells blocks of HDPE: which looks to be just barely big enough for things to fit. Measuring the hose fitting I get a diameter of ~63.5mm — offsetting that twice we arrive at…

and/or

Adding geometry to cut as a pocket with a finishing pass

One technique which is often suggested to avoid slotting is to add geometry around a part which one wishes to cut out and cut as a pocket down to tab depth — here’s one technique for that. In this case, the project is a bevel gauge which will be cut out of 0.0625" (~1.5mm) thick aluminum: [bevelgauge] Due to the narrowness of the angles, an 0.03125" endmill has to be used, so after importing and scaling the file (we will be cutting out one which is 3") we select the perimeter and offset it tw…

and consider leaving a roughing clearance and taking a finishing pass.

Best Bit for full cut through

One which has a cutting flute length equal to or greater than the thickness of the stock — pretty much any tool should work. Big thing is the toolpaths — if cutting out, rather than just cutting a slot: [image] Offset to the outside by endmill diameter plus 10% or so: [image] [image] [image] Then cut as a pocket: [image] down to tab height or the penultimate pass: [image] then move the contour down to below the pocket and start cutting at the bottom of the pocket: [image] and…

[Redlander (Tim Jones)]

@Bison52

Can’t help you much here, I have some waiting for projects but I have milled any yet.

[MadHatter]

Not that specific brand, but I have cut both laminated bamboo cutting boards as well as strand woven bamboo stair treads, and that stuff is as hard as a rock - as it were.

I typically had to cut no deeper than 0.040" or 0.050" per pass to keep the bit from screaming.