wasnt today, but the other day, finished off this ashtray. its not perfect, but this piece of aluminum was upcycled from a block destined for the recycling, and i was able to do some learning and toolpath testing, so ill call it a win.
also one of my tiger claws (whoops)
Thank you sir. much appreciated that’s what I was thinking of getting but don’t have a sprayer so I was seeing if their were different options before I bought the sprayer
I was not clear. I have an Earlex 5000 HVLP sprayer. I seldom use it unless it is a big enough project. The reason is it takes longer to clean the sprayer up than the project takes to spray. I was thinking of the rattle can type of spray. That is what I was referring to about light coats from different angles.
No doubt a sprayer is great but it takes a long time to clean it up after spraying so for small projects I will use rattle can spray but for most projects I just use wipe on polyurethane. I primarily use the oil version from Minwax. I always seal the project with Zinsser Universal Sanding Sealer and then apply the wipe on poly. However shellac and oil poly turn your project slightly yellow. To me it warms up the color range and I like that. But the polyacrylic water based will go on clear and not change your color balance of your project.
My father-in-law past away this last year. He was a very crafty man and never threw anything away. He also collected everything everyone else threw away. My wife is a lot like her father. She is a very crafty woman ,and just like her father she save’s everything and always comes up with an idea of when and where to use these saved items. Their biggest challenge was and is finding time to make it all happen. While cleaning out her father’s shop, my wife found an old metal sit stool with a scrap piece of lumber for a seat, and attached to that was an electric chain saw sharpener. She removed all that and cleaned up the metal stool part, and then painted it. She then wanted a round seat made for it so she could use it in her workshop. Unfortunately the scrap lumber already attached to it, was not big enough to make the round seat out of. I had strict orders not to discard the old scrap wood seat after making the new round one. A few months later my wife asked if I still had that old scrap piece of lumber from her dad’s stool because she had an idea of what she would like to have made from it. She asked for a heart dish, I added the text without her knowing. Thankfully she liked the finished product.
Shellac is what I like to use.
I prefer to use spray cans.
Protoyping something.
Is that nylon? It looks suspiciously like a gear.
Wow how did you get the part to move and the spindle to stay stationary? 
This is machine grade ABS. Cuts like cold butter. It’s something similar to a gear, but with a twist.
I took some time to 3d print a webcam mount.
It was a pain to wire it through the drag chain and out the back of the machine, but it ended up looking pretty clean.
I like to use it to monitor the machine while I’m at my desk, so I can see if something breaks while I’m doing something else.
NOMAD GANG REPRESENT!
What size/type of bit are you using for that? What’s the durability like?
It’s a 1mm x 12mm ball mill from OSG.
Technically it’s a burr for use in the dental field but I’m sure it can handle full WOC in plastic at 3000 mm/min, 12000 rpm. I’m low on cash so I’m babying it. It can handle some metals too.
That’s amazing. I had no idea there were bits that small. 1/32" cutting, on a 1/8" shank. That would be so much fun to play with. How are your tolerances? Does it run-out much?
They get sooo small.
I used to work a tool crib position at a small aerospace company. A lot of their parts required tiny pockets. I would be presetting tools that were as small as 0.01 inches with extended necks. If they broke the machinists loved to blame me.
For this project I’m trying to get within +/- 0.02 mm. The spindle runout should be less than 0.005 mm but don’t quote me on that. Things like your collet quality and tightness of the nut can affect it quite dramatically.
since i did the ashtry for my father-in-law, (even though it was purely chance i sketched the ashtray up while fooling around with some scrap aluminum i was testing feeds and speeds with) i was feeling guilty that I hadnt made my own dad something on the CNC. So in a moment of inspiration, I had an idea for a pool cue chalk & dart organizer for the basement at their house. Normally the darts and chalk are haphazardly stored on a window sill, which works, but this will give it a bit more…pizzazz.
plus im a glutton for long aluminum hog-outs apparently, and i had the perfectly sized piece of aluminum for it.
i bored 3 holes to mount it to the threaded table, and 2 for threaded dowels to index it square to the table (and in theory the rest of the machine)
im very happy with the fit, i left .02 STOL the first bore, then when it was too tight removed said stol and had a perfect sliding fit with basically no wiggle. dropping the pin in the bore you can see the air cushion slow it down as it drops in. that was satisfying.
and once again, my newbness came out when i flipped the part and my alignment was slightly off. (fortunately in a place nobody will ever see, and is not crucial to the shape, finish, etc) but this is another one of those parts that I haven put 60+ hours into thinking about how to hold it and whether my flip intentions will work, so im not too upset.
I use 1/8" shank bits on my SO3 XXL for engraving frequently. I use 0.0090", 0.0100", 0.0120", 0.0150", 0.0177"… Most of my SO3 work is under 1/4".
Was there a design file you sourced or did you create the design?
It was something I made up. I’ll post the file here if anyone wants to play with it. It’s a V7 Pro file using an 1/8" bit for the major part of clearing and a 1.0MM for the rest machine tool path. It can be easily sized to fit your block size.
blocks.c2d (128 KB)
edit- You’ll find the text in Layers
