Howdy!

For this project, I initially wanted to do a koi fish. I downloaded my file from the noun project, put it inside a circle (setting the fish itself to 0 inches in Easel and the surrounding circle t0 be 0.3 inches deep). When I tried to cut, I ran into 2 issues: 1) the details in the fish were too small for the bit size (1/16 inch, the smallest size at the OEDK) and 2)the circle didn’t cut all the way through (even though I had an additional circle set to cut all the way through). The initial cut ended up looking like this. As you can see, in the middle of the fish, the tail, the lower fin, near the ripples, and around the eye, the wood is touching where there should be gaps.

I assumed that maybe it didn’t cut all the way through because the tail of the fish was too close to the edge of the circle. After trying to simplify the fish in Easel (deleting some lines and moving some elements further apart), I tried to cut again, I did not run this cut for the whole time, as even after simplifying the design, it was very quickly apparent that the design was simply too detailed for Carvey.

I then chose a different fish design that seemed simpler, and added a few circles in Easel to look like bubbles coming from the fishes mouth. To try to fix the not cutting all the way through problem, per Summer’s suggestion I moved the outer circle to the front to see if that would help (spoiler alert: it did not help). Alas, even with the simpler design, the fish was still too complex around the eye area, and the piece did not cut all the way through again.

I deleted the bubbles and expanded the fish to try to fix the eye, and assumed that maybe something was wrong with Easel’s circle tool and imported a circle shape from the nounproject. However, I ran into the exact same issue and the circle did not cut all the way through.

Thus, I decided to completely change directions and do a simple shape engraved into a circle (rather than engraving the space around the circle) to see if this would fix my issue. After getting several strange “There is nothing to carve” errors, I was finally able to get my circles to cut through (yay!). However, even though I carved the circles one after another, they turned out to be slightly different sizes (I did not change the size in Easel). After carving, I sanded with 150 grit sandpaper, painted with acrylic paint, then put a clear coat on them.

Cost analysis:

Labor: 5 hours * $10/hr = $50

Wood: 3/4″ x 12″ x 12″ =  $23.40

CNC machine time: 6 hours (this includes the failed cuts) * $30/hr = $180

150 Grit Sandpaper: $1.00

Acrylic paint (black, purple, yellow, light blue): $6.20 * 4 = $24.80

Paintbrush: $0.23

Clear coat: $14/can = $14

Total Cost: $293.43