Its time for you to do a 3D carve given your HDU work and an awesome painter in house.
2 Likes
First time cutting ColorCore and first time using O-Flutr bit, seemed to work out so I am happy with it.
Felt a little weird not to have to be thinking about changing wood grain or potential for fuzzies or splitters, lol.
9 Likes
If the central color is darker I have never been happy with the pocket surface from an O Flute. It always looks hazy. It’s not an issue when the central color is white.
I use a regular upcut endmill at about 8000 rpm for pockets and get an almost glass like surface.
I still use the O flute for cutting.
5 Likes
Looks great! I just started working with 3d. I find it very difficult. I added a post to try and solicit help. Not many gravitated towards the post. Do you have any video suggestions on 3d files and tool paths?
I suggest you make your own 3D file of simple shapes to get a feel for that.
It will take some of the fear out of the process.
Take your model and apply tool paths. You can’t hurt anything.
Use cheap material, but not bad cutting material ( MDF is a favorite ).
After the first 5 or so failures you will learn. It’s the way it works.
We all make mistakes daily.
4 Likes
In progress. On to some hand sanding and paint. If I make it again I may carve the tree trunk out of walnut and set it on.
6 Likes
Very cool from what I can see and thanks for sharing. Get that sucker wet and then take a pic.
It’ll be paint through the middle and odie’s on the top and bottom. Lots of “paint by number” style layers to help me along the way.
12 Likes
Nice tree. Reminded me of this song.
Send your roots down deep and add a few limbs to your family tree.
4 Likes
That is Beautiful. Great job.
I didn’t realize what it was at first besides a tree. But when I saw your finished product, I instantly knew!! Love it!
2 Likes
Nothing a little masking wouldn’t have cured! 
3 Likes
Hey Mark. How long did this take to cut? I recreated the file and guessed at your size (12x16) to see how long something intricate like this would take. I’ve only put paths to the sky, the foliage and the tree and I’m over 600 minutes. Crazy. I’m just trying to learn whether it’s easier to break images up by size. For instance if a 1/16" bit is needed in smaller areas, like the tips of the tree limbs, would it be easier to put those on a separate layer so a separate path can be applied? Just curious. Looks good.
I cut most with a quarter inch endmill to speed up things. I then used two contour cuts around the tree branches to get sharper corners, 1/8th and 1/16th endmills.
A little past 2 hours of 1/4" endmill and then a bunch of small cuts.
1 Like
The important question: Did you make the chessboard on the CNC as well?
No, my son made the chessboard for me for fathers day a couple of years ago. It is spalted maple and ebony. He made another one for my daughter which was really nice and I did some inlay work on it to mark ranks and columns.
2 Likes