Bigger is mo’betta...get less exciting jobs done quickly

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To date I’ve been mostly a one-off project guy. I get bored easily. So, not too concerned about how fast I can complete a job.

This all changed when some silly gift coasters turned into a monster. So I’m progressing through the production learning curve I’m sure many of you out there have already climbed.

I can now cut 18 coasters at a time and am working on cutting some multiple of the “box” for the coasters as quickly as I can with good quality.

My first attempt turned out well and I dare say I will not have to do any sanding in the cavity, nothing worse then cavity sanding.

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Using a 3flute, 3/8” mill, two toolpath’s total cut time is 21 minutes. I’ll be tweaking radial cut depth (optimal load in F360 speak) as well as finish contour DOC. The finish cut for the example above is a 3D contour using 1mm DOC so 38 steps to the bottom, radial doc .5mm. The first cut was 2D adaptive, 19 mm doc, 1mm radial. Spindle at 24k both cuts.
Since the flute length is less then the overall depth there has to have been some rubbing but it is not evident.
We’ll see how things progress.

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I took my main toolpath of my trays down from 3 1/2hrs to 1 1/2hrs playing with DOC and radial engagement. I’m using a 3 flute 1/4" with 0.5" DOC and .0625" Radial engagement at 60IPM. (-edit-(cutting both ways)) This is in Maple. Just an FYI…
BTW - It looks great!

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Hey @Griff, I can’t quite picture how you then use this giant box-o-coasters to cut 18 coasters at a time, can you elaborate ?

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I think those are two separate things.
:grinning:

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Sorry, I can see how my description cold be confusing.

Coasters are a completely different process. Setup is 3 coasters per piece of 1/4”x5”x16” stock. 3 pieces of stock (9 coasters) secured on the left half of the spoil board and 3 more on the right side. Total 18 coasters. I then tell VCarve my stock size is 15x32.

Make sense?

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Well this is embarassing, it totally makes sense and I don’t know how my twisted brain came to the conclusion that this was some kind of giant jig to hold 18 soon-to-be-coasters :slight_smile:

Any reason why you chose such a small stepdown for the finishing pass ? Brutal me would have gone for full LOC of the endmill, to minimize the number of (barely noticeable) ridges on the walls.

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Already changed to 25mm doc on the finish. The first was just to see how clean it might be. Need to pick up a few long reach mills for this sort of work.

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I agree that a cavity sanding is a pain but try going to the airport and get their cavity search. Which one is worse, sanding or probing?

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