Hi everyone! Thanks for posting your wooden projects made on the LongMill/AltMill.
We are happy to announce that @UMads0n, Barb Taylor, @j.clayton, Richard Lynch, Jen Taylor, and @Mdb59 are the wooden projects contest winners. A prize is on its way!
Share your latest LongMill/AltMill CNC project for a chance to win free prizes in this week’s contest!
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We needed a way to visualize the level of sawdust in barrels at work, so I designed circular viewports out of acrylic and milled them with the rivet holes on the Longmill. Softened them to match the curvature of the barrel then installed them. Quick and easy project that got the attention of those up-stream about the benefits of rapid prototyping/manufacturing.
My most recent project was a long one, for my wedding in October. I batched out 120 fridge magnets, shaped as canoe paddles. I also used the laser-beam to etch 4 different messages onto them.
I learned a lot about batching and reducing time on this project. I would carve 4 paddles at a time, using 3/4" pine. To save myself time, all the tool paths were done with 1/4" ball nose - so no tool changes required. 90ipm with 1/4" depth on the roughing. 120ipm on the 3d finish path. 90ipm on the ending profile pass to leave an onion skin.
After that I whittled the remaining cove profile off with a box cutter, a quick sand to soften the edges, set up a drill press to quickly put a couple holes in the back for magnets, then made an outline on scrap for 16 paddles.
I would place 16 at a time just onto the scrap in the outlines and run the laser to etch them. After that all we needed to do was glue magnets into the back with some CA glue.
Post Topper - for mini golf course
Longmill - Vortex
Ash
3D file was original design, sculpted in Nomad ipad app, sliced and assembled using Blender.
The final size is wider than the Vortex allows, so the tail was run separately.
Wow, that’s quite the batch you undertook! Congrats on that as well as your wedding!
The only problem I see is that now your wife knows how effective the CNC is for doing such interesting projects. Plan on being tasked to the hilt, LoL!
