Category: Tutorial-projects

Hey guys, check out our latest tutorial for your LongMill!

Taking images (JPEGs and other bitmap images) and carving them into wood and other materials is an awesome way to make signs and other projects. In this video, we’ll be walking through the steps on how to turn an image found on the web, making a v-carving, and carving it into a piece of material.

The description below covers some additional information that may not be covered in the video if you want to do some extra reading.

Links to software:

https://inkscape.org/

https://carbide3d.com/carbidecreate/

—Note: I personally use Inkscape and Carbide Create to do projects like these. There are many alternatives that you can use. Some programs that can also turn images into carvings include Easel and F-engrave. Your process and results may vary.

Tooling for v-carving:

A general purpose 60 degree or 90 degree v-bits for routering are quite easy to find, especially at your local woodworking or hardware store. If your project has a lot of wide lines, then typically a wider bit, like the 90 degree v-bit, would be preferred, as you don’t have to cut as deep to get a wide line. On the other hand, if your project has a lot of thin lines, using a narrower bit, like the 60 degree v-bit, can be a better option, as you can get a little more detail, and more contrast in the carving since it cuts deeper.

Speeds and feeds:

The general settings used in the video work well for most woods, but you should have a lot of headroom to play with on the LongMill if you choose to boost your speeds and feeds.

One other factor that can play a role in your cut time is your retract height. You may choose to lower your retract height to speed up your cut as well. 

Material prep and finishing:

You will get the best results with material that is flat. This is because the variance in your material’s thickness can also cause variance in the width of your lines for your v-carving. 

Having a contrast between the surface of the material and inside of the cut is important in ensuring that your carving is visible. For this particular project, I used melamine covered particle board, which has a reasonable contrast between the top white layer and the underlying brown particle board. Some methods of increasing contrast can be pre-painting the surface (paint outside of the cut), painting and sanding the surface (paint inside the cut), or choosing materials that have contrasting layers or surfaces (such as with color core HDPE)

Ideas and further learning:

You can use the first technique of turning images into vectors for a large number of other projects, such as with contour carving. If you have sketched artwork or hand-drawn pictures, you can also use photos of those items, as long as they have white backgrounds and are mono-colored.

One material that I really enjoy milling on the CNC machine, either the Mill One or the LongMill, is plywood. It’s a strong, forgiving material that’s fairly inexpensive, with a decent sheet of  4′ x 8′ sanded 1/2″ plywood costing around $35 to $40 at Home Depot.

The LongMill is designed to handle 2′ x 2′ sheets, specifically because you can take a 4′ x 8′ sheet and get exactly eight pieces from that (minus the cut width of the blade on one or two sides.

I just moved into a new apartment in Downtown Kitchener, and I realized that I didn’t have a shoe rack yet, so I figured that it would be a good project to do on the LongMill as a simple and quick test, and it would also let me get something useful out of it as well.

You can find all the design files and gcode here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3178323

Want to make modifications to the design? Find the Onshape model here: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/a13ff69cba130fe9a7fbe081/w/e8122a12fba4c941c5dcb6f0/e/f80cc298643b4db924d45b1c

Here’s a quick video showing off the milling:

One of the nice things about having a CNC machine is that it makes it super easy to make a lot of different types of joinery. This project shows how to make and mill out a simple box out of plywood. If you want to get some inspiration on some other designs for joining wood and other materials together, I would recommend taking a look at the Make Magazine’s CNC Panel Joinery Handbook.

You can find the models and gcode here (designed jointly by me Andy and Bojun Li): (upload the gcode and STL files to Thingiverse)

This article will cover some of the basic concepts around how this particular box was designed and how this very basic joint was designed. We’re using Onshape here, but you should be able to use whichever 3D CAD software you prefer. Just a quick note, the dimensions used in the diagrams below may not correspond with the actual dimensions of the box. The dimensions were just created as examples.

Male joint

There’s a couple of key dimensions here when creating the male part of the joint. First thing to look at is the 0.5″ dimension. This corresponds to the thickness of the material. Since the next piece of material will be 90 degrees to the joint material, having the width of the joint equal to the material thickness will ensure that the completed joint is flush on both sides of the box.

Next is the 0.125″ diameter dimension. This corresponds to the diameter of the end mill that you are using. CNC machines are unable to cut sharp inner radii, so we’re cutting in a bit further so that we can make sure that the two parts come together without interfering. Just a quick tip: sometimes your CAM software might not recognize the feature if your end mill diameter and your dimension are equal. If that happens, I’d recommend increasing the dimension a little bit until the CAM software does recognize it.

Lastly is the joint width (0.75″). You can change this to whatever you want.

Female joint

A lot of the dimensions here are going to correspond to the ones that we created above for the male joint.

First off, we have the 0.5″ dimension, which corresponds to the thickness of the material.

The 0.125″ diameter dimension corresponds with the end mill diameter as well, but this time, the sharp corner we are taking care of is in the inside of the joint. As I mentioned above, you can make this diameter just a tad bigger if your CAM software does not recognize it.

Lastly is the 0.75″ dimension. This should be the same as the width set for your male joint. You may find that if the joint is too tight or hard to put together, you can add a bit more space in this area to allow for a better fit (a few thousandths of an inch should do the trick).

Coming together

You should be able to line up all the joints on each side of your box so that you can fit it together once you mill it out. You can use 3D CAD software to “assemble” the box as well, to double check.

CAM

We’re using CAMLab to generate the gcode.

Here are some recommended settings:

• Tool: 1/8″ flat end mill
• Step down: 2mm-3mm
• Feed rate: 800mm/min to 1000mm/min
• Plunge rate: 250mm/min

Conclusion

I found that through doing this project, that figuring out all the joints and where to place them can be a bit tricky, but once you’ve made a few joints, making boxes on a CNC machine is super duper easy. I hope that this post can help get you on the right track on designing your own boxes. You can also get started by using our Onshape files and modifying them to fit with the dimensions you want.

Anyways, happy making!

Thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3138612

So a couple of months ago I had a friend who asked me if I could scan and CNC mill a copy of her face. CNC milling? No problem, we could certainly do that. However, we didn’t have access to 3D scanning tools to create an accurate 3D scan of her face.

Accurate scanning tools that can capture a face at a high level of detail are somewhat expensive and hard to come by, but I have used the free app, 123D Catch (now discontinued), which allowed users to use a smartphone to create a 3D model. It was frustrating to use though, due to the fact that it could take forever to process the images into a 3D model, and resulted mixed results. It is also worth noting that using a scanner like 123D Catch needs the subject to be still for some period of time as the scanning takes place, and unless you have $60,000+ 360 degree scanning rig, it would be the case for most scanners. Needless to say, we shelved that project.

Then one day I came across this interesting project from the folks at the University of Nottingham, who had created a tool that could take a single picture and turn the face in the model into a 3D model. And so for fun, I decided I would try using a photo of one of our professors to create the 3D model.

So I took this model and converted it from a OBJ file and imported it into Kiri:Moto, then carved it out from some wood. Two tool changes and an hour and a half later, I had a little face in my hands.

Sanded it a little bit. pic.twitter.com/vlCJqExqxU

— Sienci Labs (@SienciLabs) October 8, 2017

Well what can I say. It looks like a face, although I don’t feel like the AI got it 100% right. I suppose we’ll have to see over the next few years how this technology progresses, but it looks like we won’t be getting super realistic masks out of the Mill One just yet.

Milling materials like rubber and linoleum can be an interesting experience. Due to the elastic properties of these materials, some of the material will compress rather than being cut away by the bit or endmill the CNC is using. Getting the right feeds and speeds took a little bit of time and patience to get good results. For this particular project, we used a v-bit and F-engrave‘s v carving feature to create the negative image of the stamp.

The first step is to create a design. We used Inkscape to draw a black and white image. When we bring the image into F-engrave, the program will use the v-bit to carve all the profiles which are black and leave the white areas alone. Choose the v-bit you have and adjust the feeds and speeds for your project. A tutorial on using the v carve feature can be found here: http://www.scorchworks.com/Fengrave/F-engrave_tutorial.htm.

Next, we secure the linoleum with a bit of hot glue and let the Mill One do the rest of the work. After milling, a little bit of post processing, namely getting excess material out of the cuts, was needed. A small screwdriver or other tool works well in scraping out the material.

Here are the feeds/speeds:

Linoleum

Feedrate: 300mm/min
V engraving at 2mm max DOC
1/8″ 20 degree v bit
28 minute engraving time

Cedar Wood

Feedrate: 700mm/min
DOC: 5mm
1/4″ 2 flute upcut router bit
8 minute milling time

We carved a quick block of wood to make a holder for the linoleum. Having a block which holds the linoleum is good because you want to be able to provide even pressure across the whole stamp, as well as keep your hands away from the ink. We pushed the depth of cut to 5mm, and the Mill One carved it out quite quickly.

The rest of the stamp came together pretty easily. The linoleum fit perfectly into the holder and no glue or adhesive was needed.

In conclusion, it was a pretty easy process to create a custom stamp. Next time however, we may try a harder rubber material, since it would be easier to mill.

With fidget spinners being all the rage now, especially in the 3D printing community, we decided to make our own! A desktop CNC machine is an awesome machine to make fidget spinners from, especially since you can use a wide variety of materials with a nearly infinite number of designs. This spinner was a fairly simple design, drawn on Onshape and made from a piece of scrap wood. We used three 608ZZ bearings, commonly used in skateboards and scooters, to act as weight and provide smooth motion for rotation.

Since we didn’t have 8mm thick material, we had to cut a layer off of the scrap wood to bring it down from 15.75mm to 8mm, You can see that the first half of the milling operation is just cutting away at the wood.

We started off with using carpet tape, but we found that the workpiece would shift slightly near the end of the operation, so we started again with hot glue instead. You can check out some other workholding options here: https://sienci.com/workholding-options/. Hot glue worked beautifully and held the wood on the bed without any issues.

After completing the milling operation and taking the spinner body off the bed, I tried fitting the bearings in. While they fit perfectly, a combination of the burrs and starting the bearings in at the wrong angle caused the wood to crack. I believe the wood we were using was spruce, which was quite light and easy to break. If you choose to make a fidget spinner for yourself, use a harder wood and make sure to clean the burrs out before fitting the bearings.

Overall we were pretty happy with the results, especially as our first attempt at making a fidget spinner. Stay tuned for more projects!

Feeds and speeds:

1/4″ 2 flute upcut bit at 16,000RPM
Feedrate: 700mm/min
Depth of cut: 2mm

Here’s a quick project done on the Mill One, made from some blocks of cedar that Chris had found at Home Depot.

We had gotten a new 1/4″ 2 flute upcut bit as a gift that I hadn’t tried out yet, and I felt like a box would be a good project to try it out on. With the geometry of this box, most of the work is done carving out the inside of the box, and so a large bit which could remove a lot of material per pass was perfect.

I started off my surface milling a few mm into the wood, getting the thickness of the piece to about 1.375in. I did this because the top of the wood was slightly curved, and I wanted the top of the box to be flat.

In the beginning I had put the feedrate at around 700-800mm/min, but it felt to slow at that rate, so I bumped it up to about 1000mm/min. I think if I had kept the same feedrate, it would have given it a slightly nicer finish, but after some light sanding, the results would be indistinguishable.

One of the quirks about milling solid wood is that it will leave burrs, especially with softer wood like fir or pine. Cedar is a fairly light wood, and so there was a small amount of fuzzing at the edges, but it was easily picked or sanded off. Having a sharp bit certainly helped, and I did vary the router speed between 12,oooRPM to 16,000RPM to experiment, and found somewhere in between worked the best.

The box was drawn in Onshape and the gcode was create with Kiri:Moto, which you can add as an application in Onshape. Check out the design here: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/b27ffd01f4c9a086501d6171/w/13922f3e1399a3ddda8572bf/e/4a509eaa67fd88133009dc32

I have designed a lid for the box as well, and will be milling one out some other time.

You should be able to download the design and modify it to fit the dimensions you like. This box is designed to be made using router bits 1/4″ and smaller. If you want to use a larger router bit, increase the inner radius of the box to accommodate.

Have project ideas you want us to try out? Feel free to reach out to us!