I’m trying to cut juice grooves on cutting boards using a IDC 1/2 Big Stiffy bit. I’m unable to get the grove to cut complete or centered on my board. I do zero from the center. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Show your tool & toolpath parameters. There are several/many possible causes…
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Upload your project file. Screenshots are not a good way of telling us what is wrong with your project.
Sharing the file is good. But it still helps to show the “Edit Tool” dialog since the tool won’t transfer over.
Juice 06-21.c2d (72 KB)
Your tool doesn’t fit in the pocket, likely because of small round off errors.
In this case, you are probably better off doing a contour cut. Since you want the groove to be 1" inside the edge, draw a rectangle there, then do an Inside Contour. Actually, you already have one that would work, just use the outer edge of the pocket, and do an inside contour of that.
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Could have sworn the dialog used to show the tool type. I assume it’s a Ball Mill…
I would make a 10.5" x 22.5" rectangle with 0.75" fillets and cut it with a contour - No Offset path.
Looks like your desired depth is 0.125", so set your depth of cut to 0.060", this will give 2 passes down to 0.120", then a finish pass to 0.125" taking 0.005".
The reason it’s not cutting complete is the groove is narrower than 1/2" at some points. For a pocket you’d want the design wider than 1/2", even 0.505" would do. But since you’re not going the full 1/4" deep, it won’t end up a full 1/2" wide anyways.
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Easiest fix is to select the inner rectangle:
and scale down until the tool fits:
Done
As noted, the Inside Contour:
Is the more expedient option and probably what is wanted.
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From the simulation, it appears the original tool is a ballnose. A pocket won’t have a flat bottom. That might just be an artifact of CC not supporting bowl bits though.
Is there another bit you would recommend for juice grooves?
Here are the bits I use for my Juice Grooves
Also, I use a Contour toolpath and select “No Offset”. Works fine for me.
One thing to note about these bowl bits is that you must watch them closely, as they can leave burn marks if they move too slowly. Additionally, Ramping helps when running these large pieces.
I like to run my juice groove about .25 deep on the first toolpath. Then wet it down and rerun it after it dries; that saves a bunch of sanding.
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The Spetool works for me too, got the same one and this gear is pretty good overall. I do the same as SDGuy, no pockets.
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