Wood Jewelry

Playing with the CNC ;)

Bloodwood Presbyterian Cross

Experimenting with molding metal clay

Present I made for my mom ;)

• The original photo used for the model of the fire ants is by Bart Drees, from here.
• CNC machine is a Probotix Fireball V90, using a 60 degree .005 etching tip on a Dewalt trim router.
• The wax is a block of machinable wax from Flexbar.
• For that one, just used double-sided Scotch tape for hold down for the wax to leveled plywood surface.  Still need to lay out a better clamping system, but that's worked really well for wax and circuit boards for me so far.
• The silver clay is ArtClay Silver 650.
• The oil used was a knife sharpening oil.  Olive oil would probably work as well or better.
• Gemstone is a synthetic corundum (don't torch-fire a natural like that!).
• Pearls are cultured freshwater.
• Garnets are probably natural, although I'm not 100% sure on that source.
• All other silver is sterling.
• No solder or bezel other than metal clay was used.
• Tried out CamBam for the image->g-code.  Plan to buy it soon - neat stuff, although still in the learning curve on what it can do and how.
• Used Mach3 for the milling control software.

Meaux Mill improving

Still fighting with bits, feedrates, etc.   But making useful prototype boards with it now.

This was done with a 60 degree .007 engraving bit and a #66 drill bit, 10 ipm feedrate on X/Y and 5ipm on Z (was breaking smaller drill bits going faster - using 1/8" shank drills in a 1/4" chuck with an adapter and there's a bit of slop in it that doesn't show with the 1/4" shank engraving bits), a Dewalt Trim Router (30k rpm or so? haven't measured).

My engraving bits seem to chip/dull pretty fast so far - tried ordering an Amana InGroove from ToolsToday, but they sent the wrong bits and don't respond to emails.  Another day, another distributor :)

Meaux Mill

Been working on my CNC all day.... *almost* to the point where I can cut circuit boards.

Here's the second one I've tried to cut (first one, well.... it just looked painful).

Looks like I still have some shim work to do, and need to do a bit more math on the configuration.

But, is good enough I'm stoked... should be able to get there from here soon enough.

Posted a video of the machine using its steppers to play music.  Had to switch it to half-stepping rather than the 1/8th steps I'm using for the PCBs to get it loud enough ;)   Used a script from here to build the G-Code vectors.