I just joined Asmbly and I am amazed by the creativity I see in the workspace. I wish more people would share what they are working on, so here is my very first Asmbly project.
Thanks
First off let me thank Maz for the workshop safety class and James for the CNC walkthrough. I took those classes just a few days ago and was able to produce this on the CNC last night (well finished at 2 AM)
Concept and Reality
Right after taking the CNC class in the shop I headed home looking for an idea of what to make. As soon as I put down my wallet and keys I realized I needed a small wooden “valet tray” to hold them.
This was what the design looked like in Fusion 360
My first attempt died at about the 80% stage, so I made a second one with the items I learned from the first. It still isn’t near a perfect CNC task, but it is definitely recognizable.
So awesome to see you jumping right in and learning by doing! I’m thinking I might finally learn the CNC soon. I’m curious if you used the CNC for the outside on this as well. I imagine if so you would have to flip it over. Really cool project to start with. That will make for some fun grain patterns!
For something like this in Fusion, have you played around with adjusting the “cusp height” in the toolpath yet? I do some work with hemispheres on the Tormach and find it pretty useful to minimize the amount of sanding at the end vs guessing on the stepover size. Also, a large ball end mill would be your friend here in getting it as smooth as possible pre-sanding. Cool idea, I need to make something like this for my apartment.
This sort of shaping calls for a ball mill- and the larger diameter, the better. The scallop between passes will be less and less as diameter increases. A ball mill’s max diameter is limited by the feature it needs to be able to fit into- which isn’t a factor for a bowl.
An endmill’s terracing will always be much more apparent than a ball mill. 15% stepover is generally the point where you’ve got it as smooth as it’s likely to get and lower stepovers will just take longer.
