I made this bedside tray for my wife. It’s the second thing I’ve been able to get the F360 CAM good enough to actually get my shapeoko to make. It’s got a lot of details that didn’t come out like the model, but I’m proud enough of it to share.
I also don’t think I’ll be trying to remake this soon as it took about 4hours of cut time, which felt like forever. Especially with monitoring the machine to make sure it didn’t try and cut deeper than it could handle.
In the last photo, I thought for sure that your machine took off from the middle to the side just as you were doing the last toolpath! Then it became clear the you were good enough to remember the power cord. +1
Tried out the trace function on a random internet image. (not selling this) It worked out pretty well, I think. This is .20" plywood sanded some matte black rattle can spray paint.
I always think Im in control too, but sometimes things just happen. For instance, the first pass of the adaptive clearing for the majority of the stock decided to go 5.6mm deep when max roughing depth was set to 1.75mm. Same thing happened on the final contour path.
In that last photo, that notch cutout is supposed to be there and was cut by hand, not the machine. The machine finished all the operations without flying anywhere. Thankfully.
I made a new torsion box bed for my shapeoko xxl. It’s super stiff. No problem with flex or chatter. Works well! Now I have about 200mm of Z height to play with. It’s made from form-ply usually used for concreting. It’s cheap and strong.
Internally it’s like this. Form-ply doesn’t glue well, so all the elements are tied together with a LOT of screws.
Previously (before they existed) I made the Z axis with ballscrew and linear guides. That worked so well, I changed the X axis to linear guides as well. Then carbide 3D made it into a product. My X and Y still use belts like the original XXL did.
The Z and X steppers were also upgraded for higher torque. It was a totally reliable production machine before the new base. Now it’s the same as before but with a much bigger Z height to play with!
Although that table is way plenty stiff enough to do the job of holding your Shapeoko very well, it isn’t actually a “torsion box.”
Just for informational purpose, a torsion box gets its rigidity from the glued joints between internal components and the two skins; both top and bottom. The honeycomb interior divides the box top and bottom into many smaller areas. When the box is forced to flex, either the top or bottom (with their smaller areas) has to stretch or compress; something neither is willing to do.
I tried an eagle on white oak that worked out. It’s not an stl or 3D file, but simply an image with which I used the round modeling feature in Pro. I used the texture option for some clouds (or land, depending on how you look at it). Did some staining with a splash of epoxy.
Just a simple test cut to see how well the s5 cuts sizes. I cut a 2” diameter circle and a 2x3 rectangle. Size wise they were within .001” with my Mitutoyo digital calipers. That’s close enough for me. I’m curious to see how close it is in aluminum. These cuts were just pockets, no cleanup passes.
I removed the top skins from the second view so you could see inside… The skins are there in the photo. (the top-most square is a machined flat spoil board. Beneath that is the top torsion box skin. The skins are not glued, because the phenolic resin surface of Formply makes that impossible. but mechanically fastened by many screws, which amounts to roughly the same thing overall. The combination of the internal parts fastened to the external skins means that any load in any direction is dissipated through the structure.
It’s a company that makes different wood finishing products. I think now they are at some Lowes locations (though I haven’t checked mine). https://walrusoil.com/
I quite like their products that I’ve gotten so far.
I’m still waiting for @KevBarn14 to stop by with some more insights on making cabinets on the SO5. It’s something I regularly saw on the industrial CNCs, so it’s nice to see it’s doable on the smaller ones. Once you get the dimensions down pat, you could bang out a lot, IKEA style. The latest youtube vid was fun to watch, because it was like watching myself work through iterations until I got it right.
