Very nice. Will have to try that paint scheme.
I struck up a relationship with a local sign shop recently and they asked me if I could cut coroplast which is corrugated plastic used in temporary signs. I tried a make shift dragknife using the SharkTooth pen tool and an xacto blade but it didnât go well so I ordered the SST Dragknife.
First they sent me the wrong size, then I was stupid and had the router set to come on and when the job started it spun up and bent the shaft.
I ordered a replacement shaft and bearings from SST and a new set of collets from C3D as I was worried it may have been damaged as well.
Once the shaft was replaced I did a couple of small tests with a square, a circle and an irregular shape. It stop several tires to get the work holding and the depth of cut correct.
Today I did a couple of larger more realistic tests in a shape the sign shop actually needs. It worked very well and the edges are very clean. Prior to this I tried upcut, downcut and a compression bit. @wmoy had some success in one of his videos using the upcut I believe but I found the edges too rough and fuzzy for my liking.
This is the smaller one. As you can see this opens up possibilities for stencils.
This was the larger one. This was too large for my cutting mat so I just put it on the spoilboard and used a line of double sided woodworking tape around the perimeter to hold it down.
I used Vcarve Desktop which doesnât have access to the dragknife âgadgetâ of the Pro version which deals with over cutting tight exterior corners. But I did find a plasma/dragknife option in the fillet menu which really helped.
If you want to see it in action you can check this out:
I am a YouTube noob so pardon my less than flashy presentation and poor production values.
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Clearly done, and I prefer the non-Hollywood âproduction values.â
Why did you have trouble finding Z-zero on the second piece? How did you set it initially?
Thanks.
The material is .17 thick, or maybe .172 or .174 depending on the bouncing around of the reading on my less than stellar calipers.
For this I have been setting the blade tip to a piece of paper on top of the material and calling it zero when. The blade slices the paper as I pull it.
In the small tests I did earlier in the week I was a
Little agressive and had the tip push down on the material. I didnât worry that it would go through a little as it was on the cutting mat however I didnât have it held down well enough, the tack glue was not sufficient so it moved the material around.
In the first test on the video I posted above I used the mat so was a maybe a little more aggressive as well. In the second I was trying to be cautious since there was no mat and I didnât want the knife digging into the MDF.
So, after the first pass where it didnât cut through I adjusted the Z position of the router up by .002 to make it start a little lower. When that pass didnât work either I think I added another .003 and then it was good.
So, more critical without a mat I think and in future jobs I will do a test cut first, but the repeatability and precision of the CNC made subsequent passes not a big deal.
I guess if I set zero Z to the spoilboard and just told the software the material was .174 it may work as well. I can try that. It would make sense given that these are all through cuts.
Luckily the blades on this thing are regular utility knife blades so chipping/breaking isnât a big deal like it would be with a bit.
My main effort was to try and determine if it would work without the Dragknife gadget or a third party app to deal with the corners. And just to prove that it cuts cleanly so success on both counts I think. I am not sure what strategy would be used to handle tight inside corners other than making different tool paths and reorienting the knife. Maybe the âgadgetâ has a facility for that.
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Making a custom bench as a wedding anniversary gift for family. I had some leftover resin countertop so I carved their initials,
Inset them in the back of an oak frame,
assembled it onto a set of steel legs we had lying around, et voila:
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Thatâs really nice. I like the change in grain direction. What type of wood is it?
That came out really nice. Just curious, do you know the font name used for âAlways and Foreverâ? Thanks.
Newbie here. Today I cut air. 
I just got my S5P w/ a VFD spindle assembled and wanted to make sure everything was working properly. The sounds of the stepper motors was a symphony. The âBit Zeroâ is essential and Iâm glad it came standard. The VFD fired right up. There were no issues with the machine assembly, except for one button head cap screw that had no threads. 
I did find a suitable replacement in the spare parts bag.
I do have my first project designed and ran the file, with no material, to be sure the Z heights, spindle speeds and feeds looked good. I would recommend doing this, if youâre new to the router world. I did have a few issues with the file and fixed most of them. Iâll know more when I start cutting material. This will be a one-off job, so I can live with some errors. Have a blessed day everyone!
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Today I finished more aluminium castings produced from wooden patterns cut with my 3XXL.
People ask for all sorts of casting designs, the Shapeoko has always come up trumps, without it my options would be severely limited.
The St, Joan cross are going to Spain, the Defender and One life to Switzerland and the motorcycle skull badges to the States.
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What do you use to color the background and do you polish these first?
Post must be 20 letters- The wood is Bamboo
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I have rebuilt several of the cast iron benches over time. The cheap wood always rots out and one I did with cypress because of its anti rot properties. However cypress is rather soft and although though it worked the next one I did with Ipe. That stuff is tough and pretty much rot resistant.
Nice work and a nice place to sit down in the garden and admire nature.
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Unfortunately, no. That text came from a vector in the Carbide Create library. Sorry.
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Very good. Itâs popular font and wanted to add it to my collection. Thanks.
@Quantock do u care to share your process? I am confused by what you mean aluminum casting produced from wooden patterns?
The emblems and edges are first polished then I use powder coat on both sides followed by a quality clear powder coat to protect them from road dirt/salt etc.
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Basically I make in wood the exact same design as shown in the pictures. Below are a couple of examples of some I made for a guy who competed a couple of time in the (crazy) Isle of Man TT race.
I use these to produce a mirror image in oil sand. The void in the sand is then filled with molten aluminium at around 700 degrees centigrade. When it cools I have an exact copy, though very slightly smaller, in aluminium, which I clean, polish and powder coat.
I have sold over a thousand, which have paid for all my woodworking âtoysâ, including the Shapeoko.
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Sounds like you have found a nice niche and have some really good marketing as well.
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The concept here is âpattern-makingâ (as Iâm sure you know) â time was this was done by hand, and folks had special rulers which were slightly enlarged for different size molds so as to create parts at the correct size.
For a tiny peak into this world see:
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How is the wood carving imposed on the oil sands? Are the oil sands malleable enough that you pound the wood block into it?
Cool that youâve carved a profitable niche from this.
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