My girlfriend was born and raised in Islip on Long Island NY. Her best friend also plays guitar for Billy Joel so I wanted to do something for her to bring both together. The quote is from her Favorite Billy Joel song and the coordinates are the location of the home she was raised in.
Im still getting used to using the bitsetter but so far I love it. I love using epoxy and it completely changed the project in my opinion. Like throwing some rims on a car lol I drew squares around certain areas to be able to use my 1/16th bit and used 1/8 on the rest of the project. Couldn’t be happier with this project.
Made on a Shapeoko XXL with Z+, made a mistake with cutting the small lettering and as it was cutting the first lettering paused and resized the lettering and recut from beginning.
Here is the .SVG file, all bits are Whiteside, I used .25 EMDC, .125 EMDC and .5 60 degree VBIT for all cuts, the cross field was from a photo I took while at the American cemetery that is right above Normandy Beach, all other images I found on the internet. This was made for one of my military buddies that went with me to Normandy Beach.
Here is one of my first attempts to make a piece on my Shapeoko XL using both the engraving function and the laser function.
Story: My bother and his neighbor like to play cribbage. My brother’s neighbor spent most of his life in Seattle, WA and moved to Meridian, ID to retire. My bother wanted to gift his neighbor a cribbage board that reflected his neighbor’s journey.
Mistakes:
Tried to drill peg holes too fast and broke my 1/8" endmill. Ended up slowing plunge rate down and paused the drilling a few times to check bit temp.
Tried doing cards and USN designs with router, but could not get the desire details. Ended up going with the laser. Very happy with the outcome using the laser.
At first, all outlines were a single line. This made it hard to see the outlines of all items burned with laser. Ended up having to create an offset and use the laser fill option to get the desired line thickness.
Tips:
When burning state outlines with a laser, recommend making lines as simple as possible. This will help the laser burn quicker (lift up less) and run smoother.
Practice burns/cuts on same wood you plan on using. Originally, I did all my practice on pine. When I went to do my cuts/burns on oak, I had to adjust burn/cut rates.
Had to burn all laser items in one file so I didn’t have to re-zero laser between files.
Tricks:
I am glad I practiced on cheap wood. Otherwise, it would have cost a fortune to practice all my tries on oak.
Make sure you have a section/area planned for both your router zero and laser zero. Someone on this forum or another forum someone suggested using a bullseye. I wish I would have read that suggestion before starting my project.
Thank you for your entry, nice example of how laser and CNC can work together!
The DXF vector file you attached is fine, but if you would like to submit the CAM file (CC or VCarve/Aspire or whichever software you used) that could be useful for folks to go and check your feeds and speeds.
Cribbage boards are good “torture tests” for CNCs, since as you found out endmills are not good at drilling. I have found the “peck drilling” option in VCarve to be quite useful in that situation.
And I have now read the wikipedia page on cribbage, which I didn’t know existed before buying a Shapeoko
Thank you for the kind words and the advise. Not sure how to submit the CAM file. If you mean the .crv file (45mb), I tried that but this page/site only lets me upload certain types of files. Would I have to create an account and upload the .crv file to the CutRocket site?
Sorry, this is my first attempt uploading and using this forum. I tried uploading my zipped file to this contest page, but file is too big (zip file is about 9mb). I created an account on CutRocket and tried uploading my .crv file, but that is too big of a file for CutRocket. CutRocket won’t let me upload a zip file for some reason. My unzipped .crv file is about 45mb. Any other ideas would be appreciated.
Yeah sorry for that, the mix of forum upload constraints and CutRocket format limitations does not make things quite as easy as I would like.
Since you already uploaded your vector file (dxf in your post), that’s fine with me to validate the entry here (we won’t have access to your toolpaths which is too bad since this is the interesting part from the learning standpoint, but we have to do with the constraints…)
Now for CutRocket, at this point it only supports Carbide Create .c2d files or Fusion360 links (unless I missed something), so my rule about the bonus point is not fair for folks who use other CAM software. Until I find a better solution, could please create a dummy Carbide Create project, import your DXF, save that, and upload the c2d file to CutRocket? At least it will make the vector design available for people browsing CutRocket.
Thanks. I did as you said and imported the DXF file to Carbide Create then uploaded to CutRocket. I updated the post with a link to the CutRocket file.
Ryan, thanks for sharing it brought back a ton of memories from my visit, such a beautiful place and the water was warm, it is hard to imagine the fear and carnage that took place on that day. Thank God for the men that stormed that beach and other places like it throughout the war for without them this world would be a completely different place.
Hi All! New to the community forums, a few IG accounts pointed me to this contest. I’ve made a decent amount of maps in the past 6 months and it is slowly becoming “my thing”. Here is a map of Lake Cordry in Indiana that I did as a retirement gift. It is 34"x26" with a custom walnut frame.
TIPS
I usually seal the top surface with poly before carving. After carving it is super easy to stain all the exposed carved areas. A small amount of stain will still soak into the top, but that can be a good thing depending on the look. You can also sand after sanding if you want a more “clean wood” look.
For large maps, split your carve into sections. It will keep you router from going all the way across the map from cut to cut. Resetting Z zero for each section will help if the wood is not completely flat.
This was the first map I ever made. I have quite a few videos on my IG @timberfortress if you want to see some of the process and/or other maps. Both tips above were really important for this super detailed map of Middle Earth: Middle Earth Map
