Looking awesome! Its nice starting with known flat plates instead of 6061 bananas.
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Haha, I came across a 12x12 .75” piece that had 0.03 waves!
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Not cut on the HDM, but I finished the enclosure for it today. My next addition will be mist air blast.
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Have been making a bunch of these double sided soap dishes from amber color solid bamboo. It’s dialed in almost 100% , the 60 deg. chamfer around the oval is extremely sensitive to the slightest
( .010 ) misalignment. I’m doing them 4 at a time. Finishing takes patience, using marine urethane.
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Nice,
It seems that every time I add ‘free complexity’ to my designs and machine complex holes it comes as a surprise to me that I have to spend ages on fiddly sanding 
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What feels like ages ago, I experimented with using the machine to move a sanding pad across a piece. That was overkill and not worth the time for sanding flat surfaces, however I recently re-discovered that I have a whole bunch of Dremel sanding thingies that could be mounted in a router/spindle, and driven by the machine to go and sand all the nooks and crannies of a complex design. Similar to how one would use a chamfer tool, but for sanding edges/inner walls. Since I’ve had my share of manual sanding for two or three generations, I’ll probably look into this next time I get a chance!
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The one thing that saves more on finishing/sanding time is a judicious and final 0.001" or 0.002" finishing toolpath.
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Yep,
I now keep a high quality compression bit just for finishing passes and a couple of smaller dia. regular upcuts to do the finish passes on the more complex shapes, I don’t use them for roughing out, sharp bits minimise the sanding as you say.
I also have a growing pile of slightly tapered pieces of plywood which I can wrap sandpaper around to get clean flat sanded edges in oddly shaped gaps.
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They look great! If you have thin sheets of bamboo like the dollar tree cutting boards something you can also do is layer one board on the bottom then tape the edges and pour a 1/4" layer of epoxy. Surface the cured epoxy perfectly flat and then coat the second board with epoxy and sandwich them together.
When you cut the same design the feet and top accent ring will be bamboo but the middle strainer section will be epoxy or vice versa. If you don’t like using epoxy 5mm acrylic would be easier to work with.
@Julien I recommend trying sanding puffs with a dremel wand. The soft puffs do wonders and come in various grits. They also leave a great brushed finish on aluminum.
https://www.amazon.com/FPPO-Abrasive-Polishing-scouring-Deburring/dp/B07RX9T1Z5/ref=asc_df_B07RX9T1Z5/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=459587573990&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=17920581359050721781&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9011751&hvtargid=pla-987871989981&psc=1
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Facing, almost as boring as sanding…until HDM!
Bumped max feeds to 7000 to try to add some excitement to facing. And yes, I know C3D, I’ve most likely voided my warranty. Don’t try this at home kids!
7000 mm/min, 1 mm DOC, 3 flute indexible 1” surfacing cutter. YMMV.
Back down to recommended 5k max now.
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Timelapse of my HDM enclosure build.
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Plyboo Edge Grain Bamboo Plywood - Plyboo® by Smith & Fong
love the edge grain and 3 ply amber
It’s pricy but worth it $ 225 a sheet 4 x 8’
I pick it up locally.
AZ
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There’s a distributor within 35 miles here as well, SoCal, thanks!
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This post has been updated.
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Clever idea, I shall be making some of these. Appreciate the inspiration.
It’ll be nice to get back to wood again (been making a lot of aluminum glitter lately) also, my wife will be more then happy to endure a few wood chips and a bit of dust tracked in rather then tinker bell dust.
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Glad you like the idea. I’d appreciate anyone not selling these commercially or publishing them. It’s meant to be confidential within this forum.
Thx
AZ
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AZ, how can you expect to publish something in a public forum and expect it to be “confidential?” You can have intellectual property that belongs to you, but not this way.
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Messing with birds today on the HDM.
Going to eventually do some copper inlays for some boxes. Just practicing now.
The cut in the video is with 2 flute tapered ball, 1mm tip, V-Carve Pro 3D Finish tool path, .0016” stepover, 100 ipm, 24k.
And no, I did not face the stock with the HDM, work done years ago with a decidedly untrammed SO3.
Not too bad, I’ll see if I can clean it up a bit with a tapered .25mm mill I’ve not tried yet.
It’s interesting how much worse the piece looks in the pic then to the naked eye.
EDIT
Sneaking up on something acceptable. Can someone tell me the cause of the vertical line? G-code attached. EDIT - Problem solved, a V-Carve thing, needed to add “stepover retract” to toolpath.
bird finish.zip (547.6 KB)
Progressing…made a parametric box from a file provided by Magnetic box - parametric model. Plan is to inlay the bird into the top. Box was made from walnut glueup cut offs from some coffee table legs. I use scraps whenever I can.
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