The first image made me laugh, thought I’d share. Pushing the XL to the limit here.
Before the first rough
First fuzzy finish pass (recto)
Verso
Cut loose but not finished still
Edited to reduce the image size
Before the first rough
First fuzzy finish pass (recto)
Verso
Cut loose but not finished still
25 Likes
Cool pictures!
Collision-nightmares-inducing pictures though 
Seriously though, congrats on pulling that one off, super long reach endmills for the win!
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Thanks! Only broke one end mill, had it dangle a little low by mistake at feed height, rapid back from loading, and BOING it snapped off and went flying. Still works fine but it’s too short. ToolsToday saved me yet again. Was a nightmare trying to get an 1/8 shaft out of the collet without anything to grab on to.
Awesome job @snakeoil !
I recently completed a project with a little more clearance than yours looks, about .375 under the gantry, but mine was much more casual on the finish standards. Thanks for documenting!
Nice soft older piece of redwood here, with chip-outs included 
12 Likes
That’s awesome. If only new wood were as stable as that old stuff. smh
That is some nice growth-rings You got there! 
Well, Moai are old 
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How did you achieve your finish texture? Any hand sanding? I have been using the Parallel strategy in Fusion, 3mm mill at 1mm spacing and it’s fine for stuff that will be primed and painted
The Moai needed about 10 minutes with 320 to clean it up, except just under the chin. I used a .25 BN 0.009 stepover at 50 IPM feed. What happens with this setup is that when you get to a plane that’s almost, but not quite vertical, there’s a little cusping that happens. I ran a fine file over this before the 320, which did the trick. Another option would be to create a separate vector for just that area with cusping and reduce the stepover to something like .001. This wouldn’t add that that much machining time as the area is so small, but I was lazy
Another, better, option would be to build a jig as Dennis VanHoof created in this video
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That’s what I, and I suspect many others, love about wood, There’s just so much beauty hidden inside! Although, WOODn’t ( ) it be nice to see @Vince.Fab make one out of aluminum 
I’ve got an .stl available…just sayin.
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Or Titanium 
20 characters 
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Beauty work! Tight fit for sure!
A little trick I use is to keep a small earth magnet attached to my collet wrench and press it up against the collet to remove the 1/8 in adaptor. Works great !
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Wow, I’ve been hesitant to try and sort of setup like this. The risk of collision due to my oversight stops me!
Good for you.
Simple trick is that when you load a “new tool” adjust the end mill and the router mount so that the tip of the end mill is just above being even with the underside of the Z-carriage assembly. You know you’re safe there since that part of the carriage is immovable in a sense and will protect the bit in transport. Then also it’s a matter of setting up feed height and other parameters to be veryyyy small, like 2mm. When the tool is loaded you only have about 5mm of Z travel up from that point. In this configuration tools will not reach the wasteboard but I’ve had luck reaching the Bitsetter and my zero is set on a center point of the stock’s top face anyway. Max Z depth or “bottom” is limited then only by tool length.
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Hahaha, this is great. Clearance is clearance! That’s really cool, I haven’t seen anyone making custom molding with the Shapeoko. Awesome job