Community challenge #30: Gifts

[Zarivara (Holly)]

Colorful Rooster Wall Art/Catch All Tray with Epoxy inlay made from Hard Maple wood.

For Christmas my Mother asked me to make a rooster on my CNC machine. She gave me vague instructions, but this is what I came up with.

I found an image that I brought into Carbide Create to trace. In Carbide Create I created an outline of the image. I used this outline for the pocket tool path. Next I did another outline set for .4inches for the lip. I used this outline for the cutout tool pass with tabs. I used an advanced v-carve tool path to create the rooster inlay. Here are a few pictures of the process.

I found a nice piece of hard maple wood. I ripped two piece on a table saw to the dimensions I needed and glued them together. I let the glue cure for 1 day and then started on the project with my Shapeoko 5pro.

Before I started on the rooster project, I surfaced both sides of the board with a surfacing bit to ensure it was flat to the machine.

The first tool path was carving out the pocket.

Pocket tool path done, now doing the advanced v-carve tool path to create the rooster inlay. Started with a 1/8 end mill, then used a 60 degree v-bit.

Rooster inlay finished. Up next is pouring the different colors of the rooster in epoxy.

I used mica powder in the Epoxy to create different colors. To get the epoxy into the feathers and small areas, I used syringes with needles.

I let the epoxy cure for a day. I used the pocket tool path with a 1/4 end mill to surface the epoxy and create a nice flat surface with the bottom of the pocket and the inlay.

Epoxy surfaced and ready for it to be cut out

Cut out tool path done.

After cutting the tabs off, I went through several grits of sandpaper to get the wood smooth to the touch. I put several coats of oil to finish the project off. I am happy with the way the rooster turned out, and my mom loved it.

What I learned/would do differently:
I only used two clamps when gluing the 2 boards together, I should have used 3 if not 4 would have been better. When I surfaced the epoxy, I only surfaced the outline of the rooster and not the entire area of the pocket. It created an uneven surface, so I had to create a new tool path to surface the entire area of the bottom of the pocket. It worked out perfectly. I should have taken the time to move some of the nodes to create softer lines on the outline. There are some sharp edges and points. Perhaps I should have used a bowl bit on the pocket tool path to create a rounded edge on the inside.

[Zarivara (Holly)]

Harry Potter Hogwarts Crest

For Christmas I made the Hogwarts Crest for my daughter to display with her wand collection. She is a Harry Potter fanatic, so this crest will make a great addition to her growing wand collection. I found an image of the crest and used carbide create to trace the image.

I used birch plywood with an advanced v-carve tool path. Used 1/4in end mill then switched to a 60 degree v-bit to finish up. Then used 1/4 end mill for the contour cut out path.

I cut of the tabs, gave it a quick sanding and cleaned up some of the fuzzies left behind. I used white acrylic paint for the first coat. Then used the appropriate colors for each house and also painted the back yellow.

Things I learned: I am not very good at painting. Trying to do the feathers on the eagle was hard for me with my severely limited painting skills. I liked the way the crest turned out, and my daughter is thrilled with it.

[Ed.E (Ed)]

My gift project is a pair of knives and display boxes for our son and son-in-law. Inspired by knife scale projects posted in the forum in the past year I thought I’d try some made from epoxy.

All work done on a standard size Shapeoko 3
Design and tool paths using CCPro 764
CAM CM Beta 622

The process is fairly straight forward.

Scan your knife blank at 96dpi or as close to that as your scanner will allow. I used our Epson printer / scanner. Import the scan to Carbide Create and use the Trace function to get a vector to work with. Using Node Edit and Scaling you should get a vector for a test cut in a piece of scrap wood. You’ll see where you need to make node adjustments in your vector after a test cut. The picture below shows the pin holes for the scales enlarged to a diameter of .245”. Exporting and printing your vector image with the printer may be an option, I just didn’t think of that at the time.

Duplicate your working vector (maybe a couple times) in CC and save those off to the side. Decide what area you want the scales to cover on the knife blank, trim your vector accordingly and duplicate. Save the duplicate off to the side or on another layer. That gives you the outside contour of your scale.

I cut my scales from a block of epoxy my wife and I poured with the block being just over 1/2” thick. The contour tool path used to cut the scales blanks from the epoxy block was changed to a pocketing tool path to make a holding fixture for the scale blanks. The tape and glue method held the scale blanks in place for machining.

I wanted the scales to be replaceable. To make that happen I drilled out the pin holes in the knife blanks to accommodate stubs. The studs and screws clamp the knife firmly between the scales.

The scales blanks were flipped over and the tool path for the grips was applied. A drilling operation with recesses for the bolt head and nut were also ran at this time. The scales were attached to the knife blank and a little sanding was done to fine tune the fit around the outside of the knife.

The boxes were pretty easy having the shape of the knife already modeled. The lower half of both boxes are cut from Black Walnut. The fop of one of the boxes is a combination of Purple Heart and Cherry, the other Oak and Cherry. The scale models were inverted to create the pockets on the lower and upper half of the boxes. There is a shallow ridge and pocket to help keep the two halves of the box aligned along with 4 magnets holding the two halves together. The bottom half of the box was flipped over and a pocket was cut for a sharpening stone compartment. A compartment cover was cut from Paddock and is attached with two magnets.

Mistakes and lessons learned:

Don’t count on two of the same knife blanks being exactly the same.
Don’t count on them being straight.
Save your work often and save an updated back up file.
Cut your work in scrap lumber first, even if you have to glue up a few pieces.
Never pour a 1/2” thick block of epoxy at one time, it takes forever to set up.

[TheWoodworker (Scott Hampshire)]

Gee Whiz there are so many great entries to this contest I can’t believe it. My entry is a topographic map for my brother.

I bought my machine with the hopes of doing more of these because of how much I love the tactile nature of the map. It took me a while to figure out the process, but with the help of @Radiation I was able to figure out a workflow that did the job.

I used Tangram Heightmapper to get the topography data and exported directly into carbide create. I did make sure to get the appropriate ratio of the export so I could size the wood accordingly. There was some trial and error on getting the image to import directly, but in the end I got it worked out for the 8/4 material I had on hand. After that I made a base with appropriate GPS coordinates and did a flip job to make 4 feet so it would stand a better chance of not rocking if it didn’t end up completely flat.

Overall I’m quite pleased, I think I might make one for myself!

[brahau65 (Brad Haugen)]

thanks, I appreciate the compliment

[Bridges_Built (Jesse Bridges)]

It wont let me add more than one media item to this post so I will try to reply to my post with more

This wooden truck was a project that has been on my mind since I first thought about getting a CNC but had always been pushed back in favor of practical or profit-making projects. My youngest nephew was born this past March, and as Christmas approached, I knew exactly what I wanted to make him for a gift.

The immediate problem I faced was that I am not yet comfortable with 3D modeling to the point I could design and machine the complex geometry needed to accomplish my goal so I knew I had to break the design into more simplified shapes.

I decided to (loosely) base the truck off of a classic Chevy C10 pickup because it is one of my favorite body styles and the design is fairly simple. The design of the grille was inspired by my '94 Chevy (my favorite body style). I found a side view of an '85 online and set it as a background image in CC. I used vectors to create an outline and scaled it to roughly the size I wanted the finished project. From this, I was able to work out the sizes of all the other parts.

The assembly consisted of several CNC cut parts:
chassis, wheels, tires, body sides, back cab wall, bed floor, grille, and rear bumper

The chassis was cut out of 1/2" Baltic Birch plywood

The body sides, cab wall, and bed floor were milled from 1/2" solid cherry.

The ribs on the bed floor were accomplished with a pocketing operation and a V-bit contour. This was faster than doing an advanced V carve because the ends would get cut away on the final toolpath.

The tailgate, roof, and hood were all cut from a single glue up of cherry and padauk. These parts were shaped after they were glued in place using a combination of the bandsaw and sandpaper.

I machined the wheels from maple and the tires from walnut. The tires were machined in two halves so opposing tread could be added more easily. I didn’t have a good way to make the tire treads on the CNC so I resorted to a few shop-made jigs.

The tire treads didn’t look aggressive enough for my liking and since I glued the tires on prematurely, I had to remake the whole set.

The interior parts were all made the old fashioned way

The grille was a simple pocketing operation on a piece of 1/4" maple. The backside was milled away to accept a thin piece of walnut. The pockets for the park lights were milled slightly deeper than the headlights and pieces of oak veneer were glued in.
The front bumper was shaped on the router table. The “bumper bolts” aren’t just decorative, they are small dowels that help hold the bumper to the chassis.

The roof and hood started out as 1/2" thick panels that were shaped after being glued in place. The taper on the doors was also added after glue up.

The steering wheel and dash are made from poplar and the bench seat is walnut

The tailgate was shaped to match the angle on the bed sides using a sanding block with course grit paper.
Somehow I forgot taillights in my initial design so I had to hand cut and inlay some pieces of padauk after the fact.

The rear wheel tubs were cut by hand and added later. A consequence of designing as you build.

Some of the lessons I learned from this build:

I really want to learn more about 3D modeling and machining. There is so much more detail I would like to have added. I am still overjoyed with how this first attempt turned out.

I need to work on cleaning up my design process. My computer screen tends to look like my workbench. It is utter chaos to anyone else looking at it but I know exactly where everything is. I will probably come back around and clean things up so I can potentially sell the files for this.

If you are going to calibrate your machine, do it BEFORE you start cutting any parts; otherwise, your new parts wont fit previously cut parts. I feel even dumber reading that back to myself.

To wrap things up:
I am extremely happy with how this project turned out. It was built to be driven so it is fairly robust in construction and lacks any parts that could break off easily (ex. side mirrors, exhaust pipes). It will probably be a while before my nephew can actually play with it but I think it will be a great 1st Christmas gift and one he can cherish for many years to come.

[Bridges_Built (Jesse Bridges)]

[Bridges_Built (Jesse Bridges)]

[Dhuston99 (David Huston)]

@Rafi Love this! Where did you get the block B from? Would love to make one of these for my niece that just got engaged at Thanksgiving.

[Dnalor (Roland Johnson)]

For fine lettering instead of ora mask which is terrible, I use a method learned from Rob Shuster @ Sidewinder Drums.
Sand your piece and seal with Sanding sealer or Lacquer or anything that is easy to sand off. Then use a water base wood filler like plastic wood, take a small amount and thin down with water to about the consistency of wood glue and wipe a liberal coat over the entire piece keeping one small area for resetting z-zero later.
After drying, I use a heat gun to speed up drying, carve as normal using bare area for zero. when done carving use sand sealer, lacquer, or anything to prevent bleeding, paint , stain or epoxy. When dry sand just enough to remove down to the original sealer.
I have used this on both stained and unstained materials with excellent results, however with stained materials, I think I’m going to try Polycrylic over stain just to possibly protect the stain a little better.
I would suggest trying on somm test pieces just to see how it works.
I like it because I’m a sloppy painter, and I get crisp clean lettering and objects.

[SnackDaddy (Ryan Cook)]

I’m actually a very good detail painter, but it’s terribly inefficient when I could use some type of masking and spray paint instead. I’m screen capping your comment for later use. I think I’ll give that a try. I’ve tried using oramask a few times, but even over a lacquered surface, I can’t get it to adhere well enough to seal through a carving. For the life of me, I don’t know how these guys in videos have such luck. I’ve seen them sand down to 120 and stick it right on without any problems or other surface prep.

[Rafi (Raphael Gilmore)]

@Dhuston99 I have a collection of jpg & pngs for the whole alphabet. Which is the time consuming part if I need to make one and convert it into splines for smooth sweeping arcs on all the flourishes. I rarely get lucky for some one who has a last name with a same letter which I have hopefully already converted into splines previously.

[Dnalor (Roland Johnson)]

Check out Rob’s U-Tube channel and look at his Amazing Grace sheet music video. I just did 2 clocks with 1/2 in tall lettering, one color and 4different colors for the numbers all jumbled up. Took about 15 min with bottles of craft paint with no bleeding or screwups from masking

[Bridges_Built (Jesse Bridges)]

[Gmarkos (George Markos)]

“The Tooth Fairy Was Here”

I got the idea to make this while listening to a mother comfort her daughter who was in the next exam room during my semi annual dental check up.

The concept is to have the child put the tooth in the box with the plain lid and place it on their nightstand, dresser, or under their pillow. Once the child is sound asleep, you put the $$$ in the box with the engraved lid and sneak into their room to “swap” the boxes.

The most difficult aspect was figuring out the lid/base tolerances so they snugly fit together without binding and to minimize sanding. Did I mention that I hate sanding small parts!?

Another design point that had to be considered was to ensure that the machine didn’t have to be re-zero’d in between cutting the “top and bottom” tool paths. ie: from engraving the lid to cutting out the base and lid pockets on the reverse side of the stock.

Setting up a rigid 90-degree corner block on the spoil board ensured the stock would properly be positioned (aligned) when the stock was flipped over…assuming the stock’s left side corners were cut at exactly 90-degrees and that the stock’s exact dimension’s were correctly entered in the job’s setup.

It shouldn’t be necessary to point out, but I will, that centering the design on the stock is critical since the stock will need to be flipped over between engraving the tops to cutting the top and bottom pocketing tool paths, as well as cutting out the boxes.

Also, please note that the project was set up using multiple tool path groups so that they could selectively be enabled or disabled, depending on the side of the keepsake box being cut. This is more about my preference and/or propensity to simplify the job’s tool path logic than it is about the job’s requirements.

Anyway, my niece’s daughter will be receiving her ’Tooth Fairy’ keepsake box early this week, once the USPS delivers them.

Tooth Fairy Boxes.c2d (676 KB)

[Gmarkos (George Markos)]

I tried uploading the *.c2D file, but I guess it wasn’t accepted. Don’t know why, but in case it was something I did, I’ll try attaching/uploading it to this post.

Hopefully it works this time.

Tooth Fairy Boxes.c2d (676 KB)

[Dnalor (Roland Johnson)]

I am sorry but I gave you some bad info. the person I was referring to’s name is Rob Sandstrom not Shuster Sorry but was having a brain fart I guess.

[jeremym (Jeremy McCullough)]

I made this for a friend who really seemed to like the little ‘This is fine’ comic strip by artist KC Green. It’s actually the first project that I completed on my new 4x4 Shapeoko 5.

It’s made of 1/4" MDF that was hand-painted and then glued together afterwards. As a fun twist, though, I added some flickering LEDs to simulate the flames (here’s a link to a video of that).

I wish I had taken more pictures during the process of making this, but I didn’t know about this contest at the time and was kind of in a rush to finish it before Christmas.

The LEDs are pretty well hidden in there…

I started the project in Affinity Designer, where I replicated the drawing and then split everything up into layers for the cuts. I spent a lot of time organizing everything, which you can kind of see on the right side. I was also trying to think about how it would look in 3D because I couldn’t think of an easy way to simulate that.

You’ll notice that a lot of these lines didn’t make it in to the actual cut. I was thinking about doing some very shallow contours as a guide for painting, since I was nervous about free-handing it. I ended up abandoning this idea because I couldn’t get it to work right and didn’t have the time to play around with it. I think I did okay with the paint…mainly because the original art had a hand-drawn look to it anyway.

This is what the tool paths looked like on a 2x4x1/4 sheet of MDF. The last three panels on the top row have channels for the wiring and a cutout for a battery box.

I wish I had taken more pictures of the painting and assembly process, but I get hyper-focused on projects like this and always end up forgetting.

For paint, I just used some simple craft store acrylic…nothing really special about that.

I bought 100 of the little flame LEDs off of Amazon for $10. They were available pre-wired with leads, which I would have loved to have used, but the resistors they used were selected for 12V and I wanted to use 3V (2x AA batteries). I ended up using 47 Ohm resistors for that.

The picture below shows the mess of wiring. I made a mistake by gluing the back two panels together too early, which made it a nightmare to piece together the wiring and not have it get pinched or anything. I’m usually more particular about those things, but I was frustrated at that point and just wanted it to be finished!

For gluing everything together, I used wood glue but tried to keep it more on the outside edges so it didn’t leak into the design.

Once I had it together, I was really worried about getting the tabs off. I use a flush trim bit for my router, but the material was so thin that I couldn’t position the bearing and the cutting portion of the bit. I remembered that I had a band saw sitting in the corner, and that worked great since I could just clean up the sides all at once.

One other thing I did was to coat the sides in drywall joint compound to kind of hide the lines between the layers. Once that dried up, I sanded it all down and painted the outside with black paint.

I honestly don’t know how long all of this took me, since I did it gradually. If I had to guess, maybe 16 hours? Of course a lot of that was the design and me figuring things out, so I could do a second one quicker. I kind of wanted this to be a one-of-a-kind gift, though, so I doubt I’ll ever make another (also, since it borrows work from someone else I wouldn’t feel comfortable selling something like this).

If there any questions I can answer about the process, I’m happy to talk more about it. Also, sorry about the lack of pictures–will try to do better next time!

The Carbide Create file is below if anyone is interested.

ThisIsFine.c2d (552 KB)

[Gmarkos (George Markos)]

“This is Your Heartbeat…This is your Heartbeat While Fly Fishing” charcuterie board.

Materials: Hard White Maple Board with Black Walnut Inlay.

I made this board to donate (“gift”) to my local Trout Unlimited Chapter for their annual fund raiser auction.

Hopefully they’ll get some respectable bids on it. If not, hey, it was fun to design and fabricate. Besides, their auctions are always fun so it’ll be a triple win.

For this project, even tho I mill my stock and my machine is trammed, plus my spoil board has been surfaced, I still decided to add a 0.00" to 0.02" surface prep McFly tool-path pocket to ensure that the entire board’s top surface would be perfectly flat before cutting the inlay’s female pocket.

Since the first tool-path surfaces 0.02" off the board’s stock, the female inlay pocket’s parameters had to be adjusted to a use a starting depth 0.02" with an ending depth of 0.130", for a total depth of 0.110" which matches the values I used for the male inlay.

Doing so paid off…using the Advanced Vcarve “Inlay Mode” feature for the male inlay (start @ 0.00", end at 0.110") resulted in a perfect fit.

For this project, adding a surface prep tool-path only added 6 minutes of machine time, which I feel is negligible so I have now added a “surface prep” tool-path to all of my inlay jobs.

Naturally, this project requires two jobs, one for the main charcuterie board and respective surface prep and female inlay pocket tool-paths, and another job for the male inlay insert. Both jobs are attached below.

10x16 Fly Fisherman Part A - Board Master.c2d (1.5 MB)

10x16 Fly Fisherman Part B - Inlay Master.c2d (1.4 MB)

[Woodworking_Ryan (Ryan)]

Not sure if it’s allowed, but since I’ve gone off to college, I haven’t had much time to spend creatively with my machine. However, if I am allowed to post past projects, here is a sign I made for a teacher of mine to give as a housewarming gift to a friend of hers. She requested a sign they could hang in their outdoor kitchen with eyehooks and a chain, thus it needed to be quite thick to accommodate the eye bolts. We ended up deciding on an oak background with popped walnut lettering. I began designing it in Carbide Create, although I redid it in Fusion 360 to send rendered pictures, and then in the end, I created the G-code in Carbide Create. I designed the walnut and the oak to mesh using quite a few locating pins. I glued up two 1.75 inch thick oak boards to create a 31” by 18” blank to carve the sign. From there I used Oramask 813 during carving and then painted the V-Carved text and line portions black. For the walnut, I carved it from the back to create the pins and then the profile. This was incredibly fragile after leaving the machine, and I broke it on multiple occasions, fortunately this was usually reparable although I did have to completely redo the “EL” portion after a pretty significant break. After the paint was dry and the pieces had been completely sanded, I glued them together and applied 5 or 6 coats of Helmsman Water Based Spar Urethane. I re-attached the eyebolts, and it was ready for delivery.

Here is the final sign and a few in progress pictures.

Here are some of the progress pictures. The top one is the carving of the walnut, and the second is a test fit of the walnut on the oak portion being carved.