When you were still a car guy I assume you used a “spanner” to work on it. 
That’s rather nice, I see there are vehicles with wings there too 
picked up one of these guys in 1/4" shank offering, have only used it on occasion.
the bigger units are popular on large CNC applications
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It’s been 3 months since the earlier post of mine in this thread where I said I would get one of those on Amazon:
The opportunity to test it surfaced a few days ago when my wife told me that this wooden tray I had cut for her two years ago was not fancy enough and could use some improvement:
So I v-carved it Art Deco style,
used a coat of clear epoxy to seal the wood,
poured black epoxy “Julien style” (messy),
and then surfaced it with the Shapeoko, which left subtle tools marks (see the vertical stripes on the left and right sides? Yeah I mess with my machine so often that I’m in an endless “I need to re-tram it soon” mode))
And since I hate sanding (with a passion), I figured I would try running a pass with a 180 grit disc:
And that’s where having a VFD and water-cooled spindle is an enabler for silly experiments like this one, I was able to set my RPMs very low (I chose 1000 RPM, arbitrarily, could have been less), because it would of course not be safe to spin that sanding head very fast.
I used a basic raster pocket toolpath, programmed for three passes of 0.5mm (which does not really mean much because the pad compresses, so depth of cut just translates to more or less pressure on the pad)
And inefficient as it may be to use a CNC for this (manual sanding would have been faster), I enjoyed not being the one doing the sanding A LOT:
Toolmarks all gone, but of course in the process I then learned the (obvious) lesson that the pad does not really do much sanding on its edge, and I can’t make the toolpath go too close to the walls, so I ended up with a good 10mm area around the walls and in the corners that will need manually sanding.
After the first pass, changing the disc to the next finer grit is very quick and I just reran the same toolpath repeatedly.
I’ll keep this option in mind for cases where I have large areas to sand on a top surface / with no obstacles, if only because I get to do something else nearby while the machine is working for me on sanding, which I call a minor victory.
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Julien, do you think you could have re-run the surfacing toolpath(s) for the graphics, after the black epoxy fill, with a flat end mill of appropriate diameter? Z-zero would be set just at the point of not cutting the wood.
The purpose being to surface only the epoxy fill and not the whole tray. Of course, sanding after to level and polish.
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That’s a good question, but I think that would only work if I had poured epoxy very carefully inside the cuts with no overflow at all. Since I poured like the clumsy left-handed hobbyist that I am, I needed to surface the excess epoxy around the carved features, and therefore the whole surface.
Also, this was my excuse to have to sand the whole thing 
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Yep, almost as big as the ones on my old ‘57 Plymouth Fury. 
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I can definitely see a lot of uses for this, thank you Julien!
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Even if the tramming is perfect, will that really remove the “subtle tool marks?” Even the hardest wood moves a little, unlike metal (arguable I know), and that’s where the marks I’ve ended up with seem to come from. For example, I often have marks on vertical cuts from the wood flexing. See @Julien pictures above for an example.
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Fully agree, even with perfect tramming it does seem to depend on the wood a lot. Another reason I like bamboo so much (yes, I know that technically it’s not wood ) : perfect bottom surfaces without having to be careful or do anything special. And my absolute favorite is engrain bamboo cuts. Smoooooth
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They also don’t run on “Petrol”. And the “wings” were "Fin’s ".
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Where do you get your bamboo? What’s some good size stock to play with?
Ikea, and specifically one of their APTITLIG models:
which I have found to be the most consistent. It’s 9.5"x6"x0.5", I must have cut tens of those by now and never had any “surprise” because the inside looks exactly like the outside due to the nature of the bamboo strips glued side by side.
I stay away from the thicker models (from ikea or elsewhere) that look like this:
because the once you start milling deeper than that upper layer, you uncover the inner filling which is usually very low quality bamboo with holes and spots.
My absolute favorite stock is this block (from European retailer “Habitat”) of endgrain bamboo:
which I used for example for this and this project. It’s 1" thick, and I just love the look of a freshly cut endgrain bamboo (lots of minuscule holes which give it a very specific look)
I have yet to find a local supplier of “raw” bamboo stock so until then, Ikea it is (also, I just love the look on the Ikea person’s face at the counter when I scan 10+ cutting boards and nothing else )
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Thanks for the tip!
Sometimes I contemplate buying beautiful olive wood cutting boards at Homegoods… sometimes it seems they’re cheaper than going on line and trying find olive wood blank boards.
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Regarding bamboo, I picked up a solid bamboo (made of laminated strips) countertop that was 1.5" x 26" x (I think) 93". Cut it up to make a bunch of large cribbage board blanks.
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This works. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3657376 . If they made a two piece spindle mount, you could fit the sander in without needing an adapter.
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Love that olive wood too Gary. I once asked @Julien about an olive wood project he had posted and apparently it’s readily available on his continent. Oh to be in the Old World…
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