Nice work Budman68

I don't think my machine is up to cutting metal but I may give it a try. Did you use any coolant or just spray mist ?.

Tweakie.

Thank you sir, actually neither, I use an air pump for an outdoor pond to keep the cutter/engraver cool and the chips clear so no chip welding occurs.

Brilliant - I will now have to try and see if an air pump will work for cooling the cutter and plastic when I cut Lithophanes. If it does I can increase feedrates and reduce the machine time. I had never thought of using airflow but it seems obvious now you have said it.

I am learning lots from you guys, please keep it coming.

Tweakie,Budman,John S


Job well done guys.looking forward to seeing your upcoming projects.

bill

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the compliments - now it's your turn to post a picture of what you have done.

Tweakie.

This was cut some time ago into a piece of scrap pine, it's a bit furry so the cutter was perhaps not so sharp.
I have been unable to locate the DXF or G-Code to make a better example to show you - so this will have to do !.

Have you seen the wonderful wood routed panels on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/angelicdiablo/2601479294/ They apparently took 4.5 hours to route with a 0.125 inch ballnose using the ShopBot router.

Vector Art 3D have an evaluation version of their software at http://www.vectorart3d.com and a couple of sample files to cut.

I could not resist downloading their software and giving it a try this morning and here is my first attempt in MDF. Somehow VectorArt manage to remove the tool marks from their examples, perhaps I would get better results in hardwood as MDF is such awful stuff anyway. This example is approx 150 mm in diameter by 4 mm deep and took me approx. 45 minutes to complete.

Another of the Vector Art 3D samples. This time smaller (10%) stepover and harder wood (ash, I think). Much better results but much longer cutting time.

absolutley beautiful, my friend- 

This is a retry of a previous example - this time with a hardwood. Although a little sanding will be necessary the results are considerably better.