Cutting pine. S&F?

[Dezi (Dezi Gebel)]

Hey everyone. So plan to cut some pine boards for some boxes. 1/4” bit that came with the machine and the VFD and spindle.

Suggestions on Speeds and Feeds for a profile cut out?

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

Start with the feeds and speeds for soft woods in Carbide Create:

for more on this see:

Feeds & speeds

Note when cutting contours — where possible avoid slotting and add geometry and cut as a pocket

Making vacuum hose adapters

While cutting up vacuum extension wands for this is expedient, it’s a bit problematic given that Shop Vac recently filed for bankruptcy, was bought at the last minute, and production hasn’t caught up. I need a receptacle for the Sweepy 2.0 dust fitting — one option would be to purchase one from Woodcraft, but Carbide 3D sells blocks of HDPE: which looks to be just barely big enough for things to fit. Measuring the hose fitting I get a diameter of ~63.5mm — offsetting that twice we arrive at…

and/or

Adding geometry to cut as a pocket with a finishing pass

One technique which is often suggested to avoid slotting is to add geometry around a part which one wishes to cut out and cut as a pocket down to tab depth — here’s one technique for that. In this case, the project is a bevel gauge which will be cut out of 0.0625" (~1.5mm) thick aluminum: [bevelgauge] Due to the narrowness of the angles, an 0.03125" endmill has to be used, so after importing and scaling the file (we will be cutting out one which is 3") we select the perimeter and offset it tw…

and consider leaving a roughing clearance and taking a finishing pass.

Best Bit for full cut through

One which has a cutting flute length equal to or greater than the thickness of the stock — pretty much any tool should work. Big thing is the toolpaths — if cutting out, rather than just cutting a slot: [image] Offset to the outside by endmill diameter plus 10% or so: [image] [image] [image] Then cut as a pocket: [image] down to tab height or the penultimate pass: [image] then move the contour down to below the pocket and start cutting at the bottom of the pocket: [image] and…

[Dezi (Dezi Gebel)]

Thanks. I did a simple heart shape bowl the other day. Was 1” pine. Took to me what I thought was too long. I should be able to cut .100 depth of cut but didn’t know how fast and RPM to go.

[gdon_2003 (Guy Donham)]

There are no short cuts in CNC if you want good results. Pine is a good wood for practice but the grain is soft and tends to tear out a lot. Just dont get tunnel vision. We have folks here on the forum that only have a CNC and try to do everything on the CNC. It is possible to do almost everything on a CNC but the trade off is the time to program it and then execute. Making a bowl is better done with a router and template or better yet a wood lathe. To each their own but when a carpenter only had a hammer everything looks like a nail. It is much cheaper to experiment with softwood like pine but eventually you will figure out you are wasting your time with pine and move on to better material. That is not to say that a utilitarian item cannot be made from pine but it is poor choice to use for anything serious.