Wooden Railing Stand-offs

UnionNine · June 17, 2015, 3:49pm

This was a pretty simple project, but figured I’d post an example of using the Nomad for things around the house

My wife runs [her own business][1] taking care of kids out of our home, and she wanted to have a standing bar in front of two mirrors so that the infants in her care can stand and look at themselves or pictures mounted on the walls, etc., which helps them work on their balance. We hadn’t mounted the top mirror yet, but we needed some stand-offs to get the bar the right distance from the wall. Excellent helpful-husband project!

Step one: draw up a quick shape in Rhino within the available stock-size I have on hand

Step two: optimize packing

Step three: import into MeshCAM

Step four: simulate!

(I ended up running a second finish pass that I didn’t capture here, to reduce the amount of sanding that would be needed afterwards)

Step five: cut!

And there you have it—a quick project for the Nomad around the house
[1]: http://ecfoundations.com

3dsteve · June 17, 2015, 4:41pm

@UnionNine

Great example, thanks for posting. I would like to see a lot more of this type of thing.

Can you post a screen shot of the ToolPath parameters?

Where did you get the blue wax that is holding down the Al stock?

UnionNine · June 18, 2015, 2:02pm

Hi @3dsteve,

The wax came in my MEGAPACK from Carbide, but it’s standard fixturing wax—you can pick it up a bunch of different places online.

I’ll try to dig up the tool-paths, but I’m not sure I saved them. In looking at the NC code though and trying to remember, the key data points were:

Roughing:
1/4" 3-flute flat end mill
5000rpm
18ipm
0.01" Depth of cut
0.2"

Finishing:
1/8" 2-flute ball end mill
7500rpm
35ipm
.1" step-over
X-axis parallel path

I know I then ran a second finishing pass on the Y-axis with a .05" or so step-over to reduce the sanding I’d need to do.

Hope that helps! The .25" tool is tricky because it really wants more torque than the spindle can provide at lower speeds, so you actually do better I discovered if you increase rpm and decrease chip-loading compared to the recommended per-tooth rating, in order to help it cut effectively. It’ll wear a bit faster, but in relatively soft woods that I’m using, the wear shouldn’t be too great.