Surfacing a board?

[myxpykalix]

I usually never do this on the bot however in an effort to NOT have to surface the table to run this file here is my question (and problem).

I have been asked to make a couple plaques for the Arthritis Foundation "Bone Bash" and i wanted to make the plaque so the bones were relief carved into the surface and the text was vcarved.

The problem i'm having is that i'm running my vcarved toolpath first
then i spray gold paint into the vcarved letters let dry
then i run the finish toolpath for the relief carving with .125 ballnose over entire plaque.

It cuts away excess over letters and carves bones into surface .125 high
The problem is because their is alot of text the last line has to be smaller text and therefore gets cut away in the finishing toolpath.

Should i surface the board FIRST to ensure no warpage as an issue say down -.10 first?
And in doing so should i set the table surface as my Z zero and do an pocket of .10?:confused:

[cowboy1296]

Here is a small plaque that i did. Please dont pass judgement on the finish. As of today I have changed from stains to dyes and hopefully this will give me better results.

Anyhow i did my 3d carving. Checked my doc on the finishing toolpath and then created a pocket cut around the 3-d. i then did my v-carve with a start depth the same as the doc of the finishing tool path.

Hopefully this is actually the answer to your question.

After all of that explantion, I am still not sure this was the answer that you were looking for, hope so.

[myxpykalix]

Checked my doc on the finishing toolpath

I don't understand what that means?

Anytime i have tried to pocket cut around a 3d carving, especially after a toolchange i can see a very tiny border around it signifying a height change.

btw i like the finishing method. I tried painting gold letters in the oak and that didn't look good so i am going to change it to a dark stain or gel. What did you use?

[cowboy1296]

doc equals dept of cut.

the raised badge was about 5 tenths of an inch aove the rest. i did a fast pocket with a large stepover which leaves tooling marks, and left a smidget to be cut with a second tool path with a small step over. the results were pretty smoth.

the wood is alder. a shellac coating was added for sealing and then stain on top of that. that method tends to hide the grain to much. i have been encouraged to used a tinted shellac. right now the tint is on order, so my next project will use dye not stain.

Question: did my response actually address your initial question? I was never sure about that. Nothing here is copywrite protected so if you want to see the file send me an email address.

[myxpykalix]

Rick,
Yes basically i wanted to do what you did. Have a relief cut above surface then vcarce into the surface. Exactly like what you did, so it did answer my question.
My initial problem was i was using a piece of thick warped pine for scrap. Had to look close to see warpage that was part of my problem.
I'll send you a PM.

[Bob Eustace]

Jack this could be the day you go out and buy something you have thought about for a long time - a drum sander! Look you would have to cut my arm off to get ours. We run every sign job through it and it only adds about 3 minutes and we get 3 weeks out of a belt as long as its not flooring with finishes/ polish on it. Belts are just 3 inch strip wound onto a drum. Jet seems to have the best anchor system plus the thing "wiggles". The half the price Chinese ones dont, however all can do twice the width boards almost totally seamlessy. Fantastic for logs with live bark. Finish is amazing off an 80 grit belt. Just 30 seconds with 100 on the Rotex then 30 seconds with 180 on the Rotex gives beautiful results with such little effort and of course you get boards parallel to .01.

http://www.wwwh.com.au/webshop/EWWItem.csp?ID=ECM%7C%7C118538%7C%7C10

Another terrific fringe benefit is inlays using the vee carve pocket method. We just cut the waste off in the bandsaw then pass the job through the drum sander (we do heaps of rectangular coasters). In this case you can pass a few through side by side. We used to be plagued with chipping on tiny letters using the bot to trim down. On expensive woods you can go from rough sawn if you you need maximum thickness and we do that a lot as there is no snib on the end problem that you get with most planers.

So there's my thought for the day! Trade in the iPad and get one!

Bob

[cowboy1296]

It just dawned on me if you do not have aspire 3.5 you may not be able to open it.

[gerryv]

Hey Bob, you must be psychic! I was just looking at that very machine a couple of hours ago.

I'm currently looking at squeezing into a much smaller shop and am wondering if I should get rid of the 50" double drum sander and get one of these. My machine's footprint is 61.5" x 37". Without the stand, what would yours be - especially side to side?

[myxpykalix]

For $1500.00 I think i might try making one first. I have an old, old belt driven table saw that i was looking at to make a disc sander out of, i might have to try to make a sander like the jet.

[Bob Eustace]

Gerald there is a moral to my post! I got the half price Chinese one. Works OK but the belt tracking is a nightmare.

Jack - that $1500 is a screwy Aussie price. Your deal will probably be $800. Nice restfull machine to operate and very safe as it cant shoooooot the board out. Great for trimming finger nails too! Not noisy either - we have it hooked up to the Festool vacuum and that makes more noise than the sander.


Bob