This week, we were tasked to use a CNC mill (colloquially known as Carvey) to create a 2.5D noun from the noun project. My initial idea was to do a football helmet, but then after a comically quick failure, I decided to do a football, first fully filled, but finally just an inner outline.
My attempted helmet
My football cut
The first attempt was a standard helmet with no logo. The facemask was very thin, so I initially attempted to use a .025″ bit. The wood I used was red pine that had dimensions of ~5.75″x2.5″x.75″
The cut of my helmet
After getting it set up in Carvey, I started the cut. I used a 22 in/min feed rate, and a depth of .2. After Carvey calibrated, the bit broke as soon as it went into the wood and started to move. I then decided that I was not going to be able use a small bit, and decided to change my design to a football, and to use a 1/16″ bit. The cut took ~22 minutes. The cut was going better, but it broke halfway through at one of the turns.
The football with a full cut
The broken football
I then decided to increase the size of my football and use the 1/8″ bit, and I use a slower feed rate of 18in/min. This cut was ~27 min. I made 2 of these.
Carvey doing its job and cutting my football
The first was low quality, as the stitches of the the football were super chipped, so I decided to use it to test how tightly I can make the cuts. I also tested the how the stain would look. It looked nice, but the stitches in the middle and the smallness of the end pieces make it impossible to grab the excess stain out of those tight spaces, and I could not think of a valid fix for this dilemma.
Filled football with stain
In an attempt to forgo this problem, I changed the machine style of fill to inner outline. I also decided to once again to lower the feed rate to 15 in/min. I made 3 of these. The cut was ~6 minutes. The first of these, I again tested the ability to to use stain, but still decided that it was best not to. The part that was cut in is too thin, so unless I could get the stain perfectly onto the uncut, some stain would fall into the dead space and I could not remove it.
Stained outline football
The unstained pieces were had the overhang of the original block sawed off and sanded as much as possible.
My final pieces prior to having the excess sawed off.
P.S. I like how most of these pictures are almost like optical illusions, were you can’t know if the pieces are coming out or cut in.
