Coffee table top ??

[cip]

Coffee table top.
Something different.
This top is 40" square, used artcam area clear .25 deep. Customer supplied Autocad drawing and I modified it for tool path in Artcam Pro.


2009
2010

[Brady Watson]

Looks nice Mike. It's amazing how the simplest 2D patterns and motifs can have such eye appeal.

-B

[myxpykalix]

Thats really neat but let me ask a dumb question.
How do you set a cup of coffee on that? Will they have glass over top? How long did it take to mill? Something like that looks like it would be a bear to try to sand, did you do i roughing, finishing passes? What wood is that? Very nice!

[cip]

Jack
I did a rough cut with a 1/4" flat bottom cutter and a finish pass with a 1/8" flat bottom cutter to sharpen up the corners. It took about 3 1/2 hours to machine the job after glue up. I was able to run pretty fast with the 1/8" because I was taking off such a small amount, ( about 4 IPS) I used 6/4 maple glued up and surfaced to about 1 1/4". Sanding wasn't too bad just used a 6" orbital and surfaced it. The customer will do the final finish himself.
And yes glass is a must.

[jhicks]

Mike, are you indicating you ran over the entire area clear twice? Once with 1/4" then again with an 1/8" to just clean up the outer edges?
We had this type of experience then resolved to offset the outer sharp corners outline inward by 1/4" to 3/8" and machine/area clear between it and the original outline with the 1/8", then run the rest with as large a bit as possible. The end result is same clean sharp corners but only 1 narrow pass between the thin outline ofset area and one pass cut with larger bit slightly overlapping the offset to avoid any separation or missed corner tip differential from different bit diameters.
Not clear but maybe this is what you are describing. If not it might save you some time on another project of this type where sharp corners are important and larger interior space can be hogged out with larger tools. More like a "machine rest" strategy by creating detail outer edge/border area and larger center area inside sharp corner outlines.
Nice design and clean look.

[cip]

Jerry, You are correct I did area clear twice but only because as it turned out with the 1/4" the bottom was not clean and smooth enough for my liking. The 1/8 did the job. Everything was smooth enough for me.

Thanks much for the input.

[jhicks]

Mike, I'm not absolutely sure this would help but it may. Onsrud sells an end mill for plastics that has the corner tiips eased by .002" or .020" depending on which one you choose. This end mill greatly reduces any end mill edges/corner mill marks. With the proper step over, the end result is much cleaner between passes since there are no corners to ever come in contact with the substrate. Might be useful on another project. Nice work.

[chris_booth]

These Onrud end mills with the slight radius are the Series 66-300 (or 66-350 for metric) and can be found by a search on the Onsrud site using the Series number as the keyword.

Alternatively, on the Onsrud site, go to Products > Plastics > Think Mechanical , which opens MechPlastic.PDF where the Series 66-300 and 66-350 are on page 4.