3 Axis Work By GJMATHEWS

[GJMATHEWS]

I am starting this thread to showcase 3 Axis work that I do on a daily basis. I usually end up running a minimum of 50 to 100 custom programs a month. Used to be up-wards of around 150 but the economy sucks right now. I will answer questions as I can and when time permits, however, the work here is meant to stoke the fires of the CNC Imagination as well as to showcase what a CAMaster is capable of.

I am also the type of person that, if you tell me something can't be done, I will figure out a way to do it, just to prove you wrong... so if there is something you think can't be done with the exception of slamming a revolving door, send me an email. Of course that challenge is CNC related, but you already knew that. I will select the best challenge and mill the requested object out of wood on one of my three machines. I am currently working on a video montage that showcases a ShopBot and a CAMaster carving the same file. Will be finished by the end of February and will post to Youtube.

This project was drawn in Rhino in about 10 minutes to match an appliqué flower on a chair leg for a reproduction. We opted to carve it as a solid rather then use an appliqué. Visual Mill was used for tool-paths. Carving time was 15 minutes. The thumbtack is used to provide a sense of scale. After the carving was approved, production of 16 legs took just under 5 hours. This time includes light buffing and handling time.

An applique' would have been cheaper, but the customer was given the option of cheap or impressive and since most of our clients are from Manhattan, they opt for impressive!

Can you guess what size and type of bits were used?

[james mcgrew]

ahhhh, 1/16 taper ballnose?

jim

[GJMATHEWS]

ahhhh, 1/16 taper ballnose?

jim

Nope. Nice guess though.

[pescado_loco]

[fantastic] Nice work. Is that sycamore?

[GJMATHEWS]

The leg is maple. I have milled sycamore before. Mills okay. Walnut and cherry seem to mill the best. Mahogany is okay as well. The worst thing I have ever had to mill is Spanish Cedar. Work with that stuff for a few hours and you will wish you could lick your privates just to get the taste out of your mouth!

Oak sucks! Take your time with oak. Watch your feed speeds and stepover. I was milling curved chair backs one day humming along at 10.0 on the Shopbot with a half inch ball mill. Mixed cuts, Conventional and climb. The grain was angled and all was going well when a 10 HP Colombo Spindle at 15K rpms., decided it was more powerful then the stepper motor on the Y axis. The machine tripped, but not before going side ways and cutting a 3/4 inch deep gouge across the 18 inch wide stock ruining a total of 4 chair backs in the process!

Another depends moment!

[KeithG]

Hi, I can't help but notice your tag line everytime I read one of your posts. I bought a Chinese machine...... from Camaster. It happened to be what they were selling at the time. I have been very pleased with my machine and it has always done what I needed. It was imported and retrofitted by Bill with a vaccum table and a 5hp Colombo spindle. I am a small shop and only have one cnc router. I also own a 43" widebelt sander that is an import and three shapers, also imports. I have through the years owned many American made machines including several Powermatic shapers. They all do the same thing. Maybe some longer than others but the same thing. In a perfect world I would own nothing but American made machinery but last time I looked this wasn't a perfect world. Your tag line is representative of what's wrong in this country today. I absolutely hate buying imports but the alternatives seem to be getting farther and farther out of reach. Maybe with the current economic crisis things will begin to turn around in our industry. Oh, nice work !
Keith

[GJMATHEWS]

Hi, I can't help but notice your tag line everytime I read one of your posts. I bought a Chinese machine...... from Camaster. It happened to be what they were selling at the time. I have been very pleased with my machine and it has always done what I needed. It was imported and retrofitted by Bill with a vaccum table and a 5hp Colombo spindle. I am a small shop and only have one cnc router. I also own a 43" widebelt sander that is an import and three shapers, also imports. I have through the years owned many American made machines including several Powermatic shapers. They all do the same thing. Maybe some longer than others but the same thing. In a perfect world I would own nothing but American made machinery but last time I looked this wasn't a perfect world. Your tag line is representative of what's wrong in this country today. I absolutely hate buying imports but the alternatives seem to be getting farther and farther out of reach. Maybe with the current economic crisis things will begin to turn around in our industry. Oh, nice work !
Keith


Thanks Keith. One of the main reasons we purchased our new machine from Bill is because of all the American manufactured parts he uses. I do understand that this is a global economy and sometimes Bill is at the mercy of his suppliers. However, Bill has put pride back into American ingenuity and work ethic. I just wish that other countries had to adhere to every standard that American based companies have to adhere to. OSHA, EPA, Department of Labor, IRS...

If someone is buying an import and modifying it to make it better, what does that say about the import? [lol]

My tagline actually refers to furniture and other wood creations. It never dawned on me how much machinery is imported from China.

Maybe I should change the tagline to read "Keep America Strong, Boycott Companies that Export American Jobs and Import Garbage to Replace American Workers!"

Well you get the picture. Thanks again.

[james mcgrew]

i have a photo of an assembly line that was posted in a finewoodworking magazine some years ago, it showed several planers on line in te paint of Jet, delta, grizzley, and other's it was late 1990's, at that time it was the way thins were, when kieth purchased his machine the entire situation was different and bill was the man when it came to configuring these machines for us use, kieths is out fitted with wincnc etc. as a mater of fact it was kieth's machine that i saw first and his relationship to bill that gave me the faith to go camaster!!

[james mcgrew]

the funny thing is i know kieth personally and consider him a great friend, so i can speak with confidence that he is just as hard a redneck as any of us.

jim:)

[GJMATHEWS]

i have a photo of an assembly line that was posted in a finewoodworking magazine some years ago, it showed several planers on line in te paint of Jet, delta, grizzley, and other's it was late 1990's, at that time it was the way thins were, when kieth purchased his machine the entire situation was different and bill was the man when it came to configuring these machines for us use, kieths is out fitted with wincnc etc. as a mater of fact it was kieth's machine that i saw first and his relationship to bill that gave me the faith to go camaster!!

The title says it all. Bill is the man... Period. CAMaster will be topdog in my eyes.

[GJMATHEWS]

the funny thing is i know kieth personally and consider him a great friend, so i can speak with confidence that he is just as hard a redneck as any of us.

jim:)

Jeff Foxworthy might say, "If the spoil board on your CNC machine doubles as your dining room table...
You might be a redneck! [lol]

[GJMATHEWS]

By the way, since we drifted all the way from 3 axis projects, to rednecks in this thread, I just figured I would let you all know that the two bits used were 1/8 inch ball mill and a 1/32 inch end mill. Yes, end mill. :) Will add a new 3 axis project tomorrow.

[KeithG]

If you cut the holes and undermount 16oz solo cups it can also be used as a pool table ![lol] Kind of Beverly Hillbilliylike :D We may have stumbled onto the solution to the economic crisis......doing more with less [fantastic]
Keith

[Russ Revels]

Keith, I can see you don't have the government mentality of doing less with more.

Russ

[GJMATHEWS]

Ran this one for a local fellow who was not to adept with hammer and saw. Of course the Pinewood Derby was only a week away from the time he dropped it of to me and the time he picked it up. As luck would have it, we are up to our ears in work right now... however, whenever I get the chance to try something new, I jump at it.

More photos in my photo albums on my Profile Page.

http://www.camheads.org/member.php?u=190

Yeah, yeah, I know its a ShopBot. My CAMaster was busy making money! :)

[GJMATHEWS]

With the exception of the turned legs and the carving detail on the front of the arm stump, the parts for this chair and 3 others, were carved using only a 3 axis table.

In my photo album there are many more photos of this chair.

C'mon guys, get inspired!!!! Lets see some more work! :D

[pescado_loco]

Exceptional work. I hope someday I'm half that good. I have yet to use my cnc router on any of my furniture. I do use my laser to cut veneer.

[GJMATHEWS]

For all CNC owners, there will come a day when the size and position of your machine restricts your ability to make something. It doesn't have to if you think outside the box.

16 feet of custom crown moulding on a 10 foot CAMaster? Can it be done? You bet your ash, (or oak in this case) it can be done.

While our company has the luxury of 55K square feet of building, I am constantly fighting for space. A recent project last month required me to make custom crown moulding with a dentil in the center of the crown. Of course the customer could not wait for knives to be made for our shaper, so I got the job.

For those of you who know nothing of crown moulding and how it is made let me give you a brief explanation. The moulding is cut in such a way that when you put it up to the ceiling it will fit flat against the wall and flat against the ceiling when installed at its proper pitch. In the case of this moulding, it had to pitch at 30 degrees. Since I do not have a five axis machine. I had to build a jig that was set at 30 degrees. The dentil actually saved me. Normally on a job like this I would use dabs of hot glue to secure the work to the jig fixture. In this case, I just measured up on the stock and screwed through knowing that the dentil would hide the holes.

Anyhow, with the pitch problem solved, it was just a matter of using 4 different router bits to match the custom profile. By making vector lines in different locations and careful calculations on depth, I was able to match the profile.

The pictures below kind of show a chronological order of how the 16 feet was produced. After the first 10 feet was ran on all the stock, the entire jig was turned around on the table and lined up using the side of a 3/8 inch bit. The Y axis was then moved back .1875 from the current position it was in for lining up the jig and re zeroed. The vector lines were then mirrored and the code was regenerated. The remaining stock was carved and the transition between the two cuts was nearly perfect.

If your machine is not between a wall and a limit switch, you can slide the piece down and let it hang off the X+ end of the table. I do not have that luxury, so I have to be creative and accurate at the same time.

I have used this same technique for making stair stringers on my ShopBot minus the angled jig.

I also used the ShopBot to cut the dentil so Angus would not feel like I was ignoring my Blue machine!!!!!

More photos will be posted in my album.

Jobs and projects like this will also be available when I launch thecncguy.com in the next month or two.

I would love to add more photos here, but five is the limit.
To view more photos of this and other projects click the following link.
http://www.camheads.org/member.php?u=190

[james mcgrew]

i have purchased a frame, xy gantry and 12" z amchine it came with a 48" lathe but i am convinced after today that the machine was never finished before it was repo'ed. it is the design bill sold some years ago and is a sound machine, my question guy is this are you using meshcam for toolpathing your 4rth axis, i got the demo today and believe it will do the trick!! will study a bit more over the weekend and it will take a couple of weeks to get the machine finished for use. excellent on the crown!!

jim

[GJMATHEWS]

Jim has been dominating CAMheads Homepage for the past few days. seems like his name was on almost every Forum Category. I can't let him have all the glory although I will admit his most recent photos of the home he is working in are most admirable! Job well done Jim! Your finisher deserves a round of applause as well! [fantastic]

Anyhow, I just figured it was time to let folks know that me and the CAMaster are still alive.

This is a quick jig one of our cutters asked me to make. The profile is drawn in Rhino and is 37 inches long and extruded to a width of 24 inches. The finish height was 6 inches.

MDF stock was glued up according to the CAD pattern I drew. The stock was then thrown on the CAMaster and we let her rip. 30 minutes later, the jig is in the vacuum press with 5 layers of 3/8th's bend board on it.

Instant chair arms!

Anyhow, been busy as heck and with this economy that is suprising so we are quite thankful. More to follow soon. Keep making chips guys!

[james mcgrew]

missed you man!!! i knew if i posted enough it would be too much!!!

i just love bigg work

jim[lol]