blackhawk
11-11-2010, 11:56 AM
Well, it has been 2 weeks since we have had a new indexer post. I will break the ice with some lessons learned after my last project.
I wanted to make a sample table leg to show potential customers. I drew up a 30 inch long leg with different contours including a tapered section. I use Aspire for my toolpaths and it has worked great so far. I go back to Randall's tutorial for help all the time. The leg turning went pretty smooth. In my great wisdom at 9:15pm (45 minutes before my favorite TV show), I decided that I would V-carve my company logo/initials with raised letters in a pocket along the tapered section of the leg. This easy task couldn't take any longer than 30 minutes, I said to myself. This is where my lessons/mistakes began.
#1) Letters v-carved on a turning will be backwards if your +/- in front of the B-axis unit value is backwards. Luckily, I caught this before I cut very deep into the leg. (Anytime, I have a 50/50 shot at getting something right, I lose. This is why I was banned from callling the toss for my softball team.)
#2) Your endmilll will cut through whatever is in its way, when you forget to adjust your Z zero routine for the center of the stock. I have a spot on my lathe that I zero to with my plate, but after I zero there I have to move the Z to .625 and then do a "ZZ" command. This sets the bit to the center of the stock. I zeroed to my plate, but forgot to do the zero adjustment.
#3) V-carving on a taper ends up being a little distorted. After I cleaned up mistake 2 and 3, I finally tried the raised letter V-carve in the oval. The letters were a little skinny in places and the distortion from the taper made several edges just break off. So now I had a .200 deep pocket with a mess of letters.
#4) When making a pocket on a taper (to clean up my mess), a standard flat endmill does not leave a good finish. If you think about it, the flat end of a regular endmill will create steps in the pocket, since you are not on a flat plane. I switched over to a ball nose endmill with about a 15% stepover and the pocket came out very smooth. Hardly any sanding.
Long story short, after cleaning up all my mistakes I had a .300 deep pocket on my leg with nothing in it. I then just decided to do a standard V-carve into this pocket with my company initials. Again, the letters still have a little distortion on the taper, but it looks OK. I know someone will say, "wow, that is a deep pocket that you cut just to carve those letters into". I then have to decide whether or not to admit to my mistakes, so that I can defend my pocket depth.
Oh yea, I got done fixing all this mess about 11:00 pm. Missed my show, but luckily hit record on the old school VCR in time.
I wanted to make a sample table leg to show potential customers. I drew up a 30 inch long leg with different contours including a tapered section. I use Aspire for my toolpaths and it has worked great so far. I go back to Randall's tutorial for help all the time. The leg turning went pretty smooth. In my great wisdom at 9:15pm (45 minutes before my favorite TV show), I decided that I would V-carve my company logo/initials with raised letters in a pocket along the tapered section of the leg. This easy task couldn't take any longer than 30 minutes, I said to myself. This is where my lessons/mistakes began.
#1) Letters v-carved on a turning will be backwards if your +/- in front of the B-axis unit value is backwards. Luckily, I caught this before I cut very deep into the leg. (Anytime, I have a 50/50 shot at getting something right, I lose. This is why I was banned from callling the toss for my softball team.)
#2) Your endmilll will cut through whatever is in its way, when you forget to adjust your Z zero routine for the center of the stock. I have a spot on my lathe that I zero to with my plate, but after I zero there I have to move the Z to .625 and then do a "ZZ" command. This sets the bit to the center of the stock. I zeroed to my plate, but forgot to do the zero adjustment.
#3) V-carving on a taper ends up being a little distorted. After I cleaned up mistake 2 and 3, I finally tried the raised letter V-carve in the oval. The letters were a little skinny in places and the distortion from the taper made several edges just break off. So now I had a .200 deep pocket with a mess of letters.
#4) When making a pocket on a taper (to clean up my mess), a standard flat endmill does not leave a good finish. If you think about it, the flat end of a regular endmill will create steps in the pocket, since you are not on a flat plane. I switched over to a ball nose endmill with about a 15% stepover and the pocket came out very smooth. Hardly any sanding.
Long story short, after cleaning up all my mistakes I had a .300 deep pocket on my leg with nothing in it. I then just decided to do a standard V-carve into this pocket with my company initials. Again, the letters still have a little distortion on the taper, but it looks OK. I know someone will say, "wow, that is a deep pocket that you cut just to carve those letters into". I then have to decide whether or not to admit to my mistakes, so that I can defend my pocket depth.
Oh yea, I got done fixing all this mess about 11:00 pm. Missed my show, but luckily hit record on the old school VCR in time.