I can’t disagree with your sentiment. I have never tried it but I did have a friend requesting that I make some for a buddy of his that does use them.
It was more of an experiment and learning opportunity for me.
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I have had a live edge and resin table top with matching end tables in my shop for months. Never made or bought legs. I had a new idea that i had to try mostly for the process and geometry in making the pieces.
Again, i really enjoy how the cnc makes me view things differently now. So the table top became a perpetual calendar. Light stain on the wood and light polish done on the resin. Hand painted the 60d vcarve on the resin portions.
(A Google picture was my inspiration - the rest was me
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I tried it at first I did not get any taste just a bit of smell from it. Found out if you smoke the ice first got better results.
It seemed to be the fad early this summer. So I cut some out of white oak. Gave a few away and ended up selling about 10. I still have some sitting on the work bench though.
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Aluminum! The warm lighting in my kitchen does make it look like brass.
It was 1/2" 6061 stock and I did 5 different cuts - 3 Adaptive Clearing, 1 Bore (for the circular slot), and then a few combined finishing passes.
1st adaptive was with the 1/4" Chipbreaker at 21 minutes (7 minutes of this was the rapid movements 
)
2nd adaptive was the 1/8" Chipbreaker at 24 minutes (11 minutes of this was rapids 
)
Boring (with same bit as ^) was 7 minutes as I was worried about clogging the bit so I kinda emulated drill pecking by doing one step down for each at a time
3rd adaptive was with the 1/8" high helix at 12 minutes (with, again 6 minutes of rapid)
Last, 30 minutes for the finishing passes (with the 1/8" high helix)
So in total about an hour and a half. With almost a half hour being rapid movements which I did not realize until just now lol. I wanted to reduce the amount of material removed so I limited the cutting to the model’s silhouette which probably is why there’s so many rapid movements.
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Thanks for your expansive reply.
I really like your personalization of the bit tray, well done!
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I made this wall hanging as an encouragement gift for a friend.
I’m very happy with how it turned out!
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What bit, font style and path type did you use.
I lost the center of a few small letters recently using a 30 degree bit that I thought would have worked ok.
Dave and the boys just keep rocking along. Reminds of a sticker I have on the door in my shop.
If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.
The current project is building a pantorouter from scratch for cutting a variety of woodworking joints.
It uses a Bosch router on one side of a wooden pantograph that copies the shapes from 2x sized wooden templates. Google “pantorouter” for the original - this is pretty extensively remixed from original plans purchased from Matthias Wandel, and incorporates some of the features of the metal commercial version. Lots of plywood and oak parts drawn in CC and run though CM on the 5 Pro 2x4. Joint routing templates drawn in Alire Atom 3D and rendered using MeshCam. Still a work in progress, but I’ve completed enough now to test alignment and cut some mortices and tenons with it.
There are a few other projects laying around in the background, including my Arduino jog box for CM by the Surface Pro.
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I bought the plans from Matthias Wandel a while back. Just have not gotten to it. Someday.
What joints do you need to cut that some equivalent couldn’t be cut on the machine?
Font is ‘Vivaldi’ in italic, 0.5" @ 100 spacing
End Mill is #302 Vee 60d, PR-12, FR-35, RPM-1800, D/P-0.08 with a Max Depth of 0.07, no offset.
Script is V Carve
Foo Figters, Let It Die and FF is Contour
(All done with #302 Vee 60d)
Each line written separately, which may seem painful but is definitely for the best in my opinion.
I had taken great care in plaining and sanding this fairly large 2.5" board 24x16. Flat is so important. My table is square and flat but the concrete floor it can wheel across does change slightly. This means i check table first for level. This current position im out 0.3d. Therefore my board must be at 0.3d to be flat in respect to the environment.
All went well minus the last verse on the bottom left. It scribbed in the air mostly. A small dip in the board. At the end of the project I reset zero to the specific troubled issue. Then disabled everything except that verse. Fingeres crossed while holding the E-Stop it worked!
Minwax 210B Golden Oak for finish
(The picture shows level at 0.0 but i shimmed it up for the picture. I didnt feel like explaining it to those who dont care haha). One of my favorite tools 
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There isn’t much you can’t cut on the 5 Pro, but it’s a question of time, both in drafting and in cutting.
The pantorouter will cut a full set of clean mortice and tenons for a table or chairs in a couple of minutes and can easily do so on angled pieces that are hard to secure on the CNC. Changing over to end-cut tenons on the front of the 5 Pro is possible but time-consuming.
It’s much like making long straight cuts on the CNC - it’s possible, but far quicker and easier on the table saw.
It’s also a fun challenge to build…
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This is my first CNC project after getting my Shapeoko 5 set up (minus a couple screws I’m waiting on).
I got a cheap 15.6" portable monitor to connect to the Raspberry Pi running Carbide Motion but it didn’t have any mounting options. I modeled a base in Fusion with slots for the fans (or maybe they are speakers, I couldn’t tell) and IO ports and cut it out of a piece of MDF. Then I created a drawing for the acrylic screen cover and cut that out.
The Shapeoko worked flawlessly and the MDF part was simple. I haven’t worked with acrylic much and things fell off a bit there. I think the acrylic flexed a bit while cutting, and I still need to tram, but it left a half MM of material on an edge which was a pain to get off cleanly. Then I decided I wanted a couple more bolt holes than I originally cut out and foolishly used an automatic center punch near one edge of the acrylic and sent a chunk of acrylic into some unknown corner of the garage.
It was a fun, simple first project to start learning the workflow and I’m still happy with the results
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I installed a new wastebord today after several years of surfacing my old one.
2 sheets of 19mm mdf, bottom one is bolted to the Aluminum plate, top one is glued on.
After they were in place I did a contour cut around the perimeter to square it up to my machine for easy alignment of stock, then I surfaced it with the McFly. Ready to go for new jobs
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To keep your spoilboard in good shape try using bottom of material on through cuts. I replaced my SO3 XXL spoilboard in October 22 and except for a few operator errors it is in good shape. When I used the top of material I either cut through or left an onion skin. Since switching to the bottom of material for through cuts my spoilboard is near perfect. For projects that dont cut through I still use the top of material. I always measured my material very carefully but would still get cut through. Give it a try and see what you think.
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Work in progress but cut out a text inlay plug tonight, not sure why but these text inlay’s are the most stressful to watch… Took me 2 hours to cut this out but the fine detail look pretty good, slowed it down to avoid chipout. I’ll say cherry cut way better then the roasted maple I used last time which was just brittle and prone to chipout. Dry fit locked into place with 1.5mm spacing between the flats of the sign and inlay backing material. Anyhow spread the glue, set the text inlay plug into place and clamped it down on the hybrid table. Tomorrow I’ll get to see if it’ll be a success or if I’m milling out 3mm of the sign and redoing the engraving with masking and paint… Fingers crossed!!!
EDIT: So I snuck out to the workshop this morning because I really wanted to see the result. Still have some sanding to knock down the text flush with the surface and I did notice a few characters that will need some repair work but I’ll scrape out some of the voids and fill with glue and sawdust from cutting the inlay plug. Also noticed that the characters that chipped out are closer to the center, I’m thinking the clamping using the hybrid table was my issue because I’m pretty sure the wood clamps bowed under pressure and had more clamping force on the edges then in the center of the sign. If I use this method again I’ll need to consider using a board with a flat side and on the other a curve to try and correct this. Ideally I’d be using a hydraulic press like my uncle had in his workshop but I don’t have the space for one of those. Anyone use the vacuum bags for this, I’ve seen people use them for veneers but thinking it may work for this and much easier to store away.
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I am so jealous. I have been trying for over a week to get one inlay to work and all I get is firewood.
Maybe you have a different idea on how to make an inlay like this. Can you share the bits you used and the setting depths of both the pocket and the plug? I have review about 5-10 different people’s versions and none of them are working for me so maybe you are doing something different.
I’m beginning to believe that my 3XXL with the std. router just can’t do the job. Everything looks great in all my previews for CC, but the cutouts are just trash.
Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks