Wood CNC Fun

The local chapter for Gliding Stars is having a annual show May 2019. Using a Space Theme we needed an astronaut, Saturn, Moon, the sun, a satellite, and a rocket. Using foam board, the outlines were cut using a ¼ drill bit.

Thanks to Mechalich, I was schooled once again on the Wood CNC machine.  This project had me ready to throw the CNC out the door! Side note, keep using machine regularly to retain skills.

V Carve Settings: One problem I had was that it was not cutting into the foam board at the depth that I chose.  Apparently under the Z Gap above Material, it defaulted to a number other than zero. I am not sure what that is for, but once I changed it to 0, the cut worked.

Before we figured out the Z Gap problem, we started fresh and created a new tool to make sure we had the right criteria because things weren’t meshing with Mach IV. For example, what I had in V Carve did not look the same in Mach IV.

Here is the first cut where the CNC only cut in slightly.  After the Z Gap problem was solved, I tried cutting again, but this time it was offset and made a slightly off centered cut.  I was ready to throw the CNC machine out the door. After this one, the other five shapes came out perfectly.

Astronaut

Below are examples of the sun prop that was cut out.

V Carve set up for the sun prop
Mach IV set up for the sun prop
Final piece cut.  I purposely left the sun in place to ensure safety for transport.

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