Any recommendations on where to start in terms of feeds/speeds? I’m thinking treating it like delrin or a hard wood might be a fine jumping off point
@bpedit I am hoping you have some insight given your considerable experience with faux ivory
(Though if I remember right, you’re not a big fan of the tagua )
Workholding should be fun, I’ve got some “Jett Sett Ballistic” to try. It is a thermoplastic with a working temp around 170f
Jett Sett basic is slightly pliable when fully cooled but the “ballistic” variant is Kevlar reinforced to give it some exceptional rigidity.
If it seems to work well, I’ll likely make some custom soft jaws with a thick layer of the stuff. Heat it up, close the jaws around the object, let it cool, give it a little extra torque. Should make for some awesome “instant” soft jaws that will be perfect for holding organic shapes…that’s the plan anyway.
Never heard of vegetable ivory. Looked it up and seems it is part of a nut of palm trees. The link to the buttons was interesting. Do you slice it up to make your projects.
I’ve never worked with it before, figuring things out as I go
But most folks seem to either carve the entire thing whole with a medium grit (or equivalent) rotary burr or slice em up first with something like a band saw.
I don’t have a band saw or little table saw (yet!) so I am going to take a crack at milling them whole. Not quite sure what I want to make yet…maybe a keycap or a little 3d bee
I haven’t worked with the nut in awhile but, as you mentioned, I think it’s very similar to the polyester (faux ivory). You may have to slow down if chipping occurs which may happen in the ‘ivory’ when you are cutting edges of pockets. Otherwise these values seem ok for 3D work. Here’s a sampling of feeds for various size bits, all speeds are 10,000 on my Nomad Pro.
I’ve turned tagua on a lathe and didn’t really notice anything unusual about it. It cut well and sanded and finished easily. Never tried it on the CNC, but it makes a great inlay material. I’d probably bandsaw it into slices and then glue it down for milling treating it like a dense hardwood.
Sorry, got distracted making cheesecake (learned what “thixotropic” means though, so that’s neat)
Ok the Jett sett ballistic is a crazy cool material. It does harden to an exceptionally rigid form.
Fun fact, I’m pretty sure I had an entire mask of this stuff to keep my head stationary during radiation therapy. It’s laid out in a thin mesh and formed around the person in-situ then outfitted with clamps to keep things fully constrained and highly repeatable.
(So…the exact same application I am using for this nut. Wonder where I got the idea )
I’ve just got this all ready to go. I am going to flatten it in a few stepdowns, then do a3d carve on that plane. Then I can release the entire nut and slice off the 3d bit.
At that point it might make sense to just super glue the rest of the material instead of bothering with the thermoplastic…we’ll see.
Mills beautifully, the work holding is rock solid, my wife wants little ivory bee zipper pulls for all of her dresses…so apparently I’ll be getting good with this stuff.
Then finishing was done with a v-bit of .005in tip diameter. This was pretty ugly and rough without post processing. Though most of it came out pretty clean after something like a firm nylon brush broke away all the fuzzies.
Cool thing about this work holding is that it should be pretty darn repeatable even when fully removed and reinserted. The many different geometries picked up by the Jett sett should give it an awful lot to locate on. (Bottom side of plastic holder)
I am truly awful when it comes to dye. I figured I might as well see if alcohol inks do anything interesting…I think there’s something here with some discipline and practice.
I’ll respond to the comments here in a bit more detail when I get some time.
There’s still plenty to figure out but this is a really promising material so far.
It’s interesting enough to warrant me picking up a little saw to slice them. I’ve needed one since pickup up jewelry related tinkering anyway.
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