Made a Halloween themed welcome porch leaner on a Shapeoko Pro 5. Used MDF to carve out the design.
First step was to use a 1 1/4in surfacing bit to clear out the material around the design.
I used the rest machining feature for several bits to carve the detail of the design.
1/4 down cut end mill
Next bit used was the 1/8 down cut end mill.
Also used 1/16 and 1/32 down cut bits to get the small details of the spider webs and skeleton bones.
Finally cut it out with a 1/4 down cut bit.
I hand painted the sign using black, white, orange and gray paint. A few pictures of the finished porch sign.
Lessons learned: Clearing the material around the design and the small details of the design made this a long machine time. I probably should have carved the design into the wood instead of clearing the material around the design, that would have saved a lot of time.
What I would do differently: Instead of cutting the sign out in a rectangular shape, I think I should have cut it out in the shape of a coffin. I am happy with the way the sign turned out.
skelly.c2d (968 KB)