Been learning on my first CNC since October. This wall plaque gift came out pretty good. Roughly 12"x 10" and finished .5" thick. Biggest challenge was to get good clamping force in the center area. when gluing up. Depth of walnut advance vcarve was.250 maple insert start depth .150 max depth of .350. on the maple i also ran a adcance vcarve with start of 0 to max of .15 first just to remove excess material.
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Eric, that’s awesome. Really gorgeous.
I’m also learning. I’m just a couple months behind you, got my xxl pro in december. Haven’t touched inlays yet, but looking to try some soon.
I’m curious about the process. Would you be willing to share your workflow for preparing the material and cutting this kind of inlay?
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I am fortunate to have many years of experience to woodwork and a pretty comprehensive woodworking shop.
The material prep involved glue up and plaining of the blanks. your exact process my differ depending on what you have to work with. but basically you need flat and consistent thickness on the materials.
The base piece should be a little thicker than the final dimension to allow for sanding after completion.
for the blank for the plug needs to have enough material to keep the pieces together during blue up.
When I started experimenting with the inlays i worked with scrap pine to get it right, and understand the relationship between the the different start and stop depths
For the glue ups i had drilled some relief holes in the maple to prevent the buildup of air / glue in the large open areas of the design.
When I cut the walnut i cut not only the advance vcarve for the inlay, but cut a contour with tabs for the outline of the piece, and left these tabs intact. this helped me run this on the bandsaw to remove most of the waste maple after the glue had cured. then just careful application of belt sander, scroll saw to remove the tabs and clean things up before finishing. no stain, just a satin polyurathane.
I also ran a slot in the back at the top with t-bit in rounter/table…
Just remember before you cut the insert/plug MIRROR the vectors
If you have any questions feel free to ask
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