In the very near-future I’m going to be embarking on a project that will require me to move hardwood stock 3 times in the Y direction and once in the X direction (and then again 3 more times in the Y direction) to machine a 3D texture into the entire piece. This 3D texture is not uniform and will require a decent amount of precision (or I’ll have a lot of sanding to do to mask mistakes). I’m planning for a single tool job with roughing and finishing operations during each step/stock movement.
In my head I’ve thought of 2 separate solutions and I’m not sure which is better?
#1 In my head, creating Locator pins and machine boundaries is a relatively good option. (Like this)
However, In the video they only do 1 move to realize their extra long part; however, in my head, if I needed to do 3 moves I would just create another set of locator pins as part of the 2nd setup/step and could repeat this for infinity.
PROs: super easy, reliable, locator pins accomplish stock positioning as well as squaring to the machine, offset allows for a consistent Z zeroing point (if a tool-change is required) as my bitsetter will have to be uninstalled for this operation.
CONs: stock needs to have an offset so that you don’t machine holes into your final product
#2 As part of the design I include a 1/4” endmill “platform” (think something like a helicopter landing pad) inside of the design that can be used as a new X/Y/Z origin for the subsequent step. Then, when all steps are complete you sand away each landing pad.
PROs: no need for an offset to accommodate locator pins, more accurate(???), platform can easily re-zero z at any point in the event of tool or job failure.
CONs: your stock needs to be square and you will need to have a squaring device on your waste board to re-square after each movement.
Which option should I go with? Is there something I’m not thinking of?
Am I missing something, because I can’t wrap my head around how you would tile in the X direction wider than the machine? So my XL would only be capable of 31" in width (but theoretically infinite in the Y) without some dominoes and glue…
35” in width is my goal so in my head I’m going to start the job with the stock right up against the X+ Eccentric nuts, do 3 Y direction moves, then move the stock right up against my X- eccentric nuts, and repeat 3 Y direction moves.
Tiling is still on my to do list but there are options, 3, 4 and 5, I have seen many different ways of indexing in videos and other tutorials.
Choosing a method depends a lot on your setup. I have holes with 1/4in T-nuts on a 2X2in grid in my supplementary wasteboard and I tend to rely on those as they provide perfect indexing. If I was tiling, I would probably rely on those holes and place a bolt in the holes, similar to number one but as you mentioned, there are pros and cons. What constraints are you willing to live with?
So you did not need pins, another method could be to install two runners along the Y axis that would guide your material and carefully mark each of them with registration lines and also mark the workpiece precisely on each side by the amount of your tiling offset then just slide and clamp the workpiece for each tile. This way you would be able to use the whole width of the workpiece but in that case you would probably need to rely on strategically placed clamps.