Ok guys, I use my CNC's for Vcarving only.  We get 3/4" pine from our suppliers and life is good, that is until someone forgets to plane the material one last time, and the whole unit is thicker than normal.

At any rate, for anyone who does Vcarving, you know that material thickness is crucial, too thick and the letters appear too deep.  Too thin, and the letters are not deep enough.  S4S stuff is never a problem for us.

So we have a customer who does a ton of business with us who got the bright idea to buy some closeout wood from someone.  18,000 pcs of rough cut pine that varies in thickness +/- 1/16".  I already told this guy the thickness needs to be right on the money all through this supply of wood, but he didn't listen.  So I have some boards that are fully 1/8" thicker than others.  This will be a Vcarving nightmare.

So my question is, is there another bit that can be used to make suitable signs?  This customer is used to all the different fonts you can achieve with a Vbit, so extremely boring and straight fonts with no letter thickness variation will probably not fly for this guy.  Fonts like Arial are totally out of the question.  Any ideas?  I simply cannot plane the material as I do not have a planer.  Plus I think this guy wants the rough look anyway.

Make up a simple "touch plate" and set Z  0 to each individual board.
Macros are here on the forum (Gerry's, among others).

Keep your customer happy and the $$$$ rollin' in.

Buy a used portable planer for $200 and plane them all down. Then sell the planer when you're done, if you don't have any use for it.

I don't really see teh problem . You set Work zero to teh top of the board so the cuts will be the same depth as always.

DId I miss something

(;-) TP

Maybe he doesn't want to have to re-zero 18,000 times?

I would rather  set 18,000 zeros than plane 18,000 boards (;-)

Just a thought (;-) TP

 

That $200 planer would probably be shot by then too ...... if not sooner.
 

18,000 seriously?

this is not manual work surely?
cnc would be worn out before running that lot?

 I would put a FLIP DOWN touch probe on Z and let the machine handle it all. Load the board push the button, drink some coffee, remove the board. REPEAT.

I am also sure I could come up with a simple auto loader for the board.

(;-) TP

I'd use a laser distance sensor to probe the top of the board. Not cheap (maybe $600) but accurate and completely automated. Probe every board and every part every time, no crashes no bad parts.