Three Piece Inlay - Took Way Too Long

On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:29:56 -0500, Morris Dovey <[email protected]>
wrote:

>t wrote:
>
>> I was actually asking for a clue on the ability of the bot to
>> replicate the triple inlay.
>>
>> I have a 32" x 16" cherry box elevation with strong horizontal grain
>> and a 1 1/4"square inlay laid into it.
>
>The 'bot could handle the cutting without problem. If you're really
>fussy about wanting to hide the bit radius at the inside corners, you
>could use a 1/64" bit (which would shrink the radius to 1/128").
>
>The only ticklish place might be the serif at the top of the '1', but I
>think there'd be no problem if cutting started at the top of the serif
>and proceeded counterclockwise around the figure.
>
>The only fixturing I think you'd need would be some double-stick tape.
>
>It'd be a lot easier to cut the cherry before assembly - and perhaps to
>assemble and sand the inlay elements before assembly as well.
>
>> The choice to run both the Satinwood and the Redheart on the vertical
>> was to focus the eye. The Holly, naturally, has no apparent grain.
>>
>> Might be bad visual theory. I've certainly been wrong before.
>
>Dunno. I've been told that, as an artist, I'm a pretty good engineer;
>and that, as an engineer, I'm better as an artist. :-)
>
>I'm not sure this has a right or wrong.


How clean a cut do you get out of that puppy on veneer? Our single
axis CNC chews the shit out of solid oak. I'd hate to see what it did
to sub 1/32" stuff.

I'm fascinated by the concept but worried about the real world
problems.

A triple inlay means that you hog out an initial square (in this
case), glue in the base veneer, hog out the reduced square (once
again, in this case), glue that veneer in and level it off enough for
the next step, and then incise for the numeral (see supra).

I know that I took most of six hours to do this but I don't see how
the bot can reduce the time to anything like what you talked about
earlier.

I'd be happy to be wrong.



tom watson




tom watson

t wrote:

> This took me almost six hours!
>
> If anyone has a better way of doing this, I'd like to hear about it.

Hmm - I think I might have been able to shorten the total time to
between 15 and 20 minutes using my 'bot. <vbg>

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/

t wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:09:57 -0500, Morris Dovey <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> t wrote:
>>
>>> This took me almost six hours!
>>>
>>> If anyone has a better way of doing this, I'd like to hear about it.
>> Hmm - I think I might have been able to shorten the total time to
>> between 15 and 20 minutes using my 'bot. <vbg>
>
>
> You really do Suck, Morris.
>
> And I mean that in the best possible way.

Well, the job could go faster but I allowed for programming time and for
a trial run on scrap veneer.

A /third/ run could probably be done in under a minute - but you'd
probably still want to spend at least a minute gluing and another minute
and a half sanding.

What's it going to take to get you to build one of these things for
yourself?

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Projects/JBot/

t wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:42:02 -0500, Morris Dovey <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> t wrote:
>>> On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:09:57 -0500, Morris Dovey <[email protected]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> t wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> This took me almost six hours!
>>>>>
>>>>> If anyone has a better way of doing this, I'd like to hear about it.
>>>> Hmm - I think I might have been able to shorten the total time to
>>>> between 15 and 20 minutes using my 'bot. <vbg>
>>>
>>> You really do Suck, Morris.
>>>
>>> And I mean that in the best possible way.
>> Well, the job could go faster but I allowed for programming time and for
>> a trial run on scrap veneer.
>>
>> A /third/ run could probably be done in under a minute - but you'd
>> probably still want to spend at least a minute gluing and another minute
>> and a half sanding.
>>
>> What's it going to take to get you to build one of these things for
>> yourself?
>
>
> Check the pix out on ABPW and give me a clue.

Not bad. I think I might have run the redheart grain horizontally, but
that's just me - everybody's an art critic and if you'd done that,
someone else would have said to run the grain vertically. :-)

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/

t wrote:

> I was actually asking for a clue on the ability of the bot to
> replicate the triple inlay.
>
> I have a 32" x 16" cherry box elevation with strong horizontal grain
> and a 1 1/4"square inlay laid into it.

The 'bot could handle the cutting without problem. If you're really
fussy about wanting to hide the bit radius at the inside corners, you
could use a 1/64" bit (which would shrink the radius to 1/128").

The only ticklish place might be the serif at the top of the '1', but I
think there'd be no problem if cutting started at the top of the serif
and proceeded counterclockwise around the figure.

The only fixturing I think you'd need would be some double-stick tape.

It'd be a lot easier to cut the cherry before assembly - and perhaps to
assemble and sand the inlay elements before assembly as well.

> The choice to run both the Satinwood and the Redheart on the vertical
> was to focus the eye. The Holly, naturally, has no apparent grain.
>
> Might be bad visual theory. I've certainly been wrong before.

Dunno. I've been told that, as an artist, I'm a pretty good engineer;
and that, as an engineer, I'm better as an artist. :-)

I'm not sure this has a right or wrong.

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/

jo4hn <[email protected]> wrote in news:KM-
[email protected]:

> I use my Sawzall. Does great inlay work. Augmented with a hand sledge
> and a cold chisel.
> boop,
> jo4hn
>

What IS the best temperature to use a chisel at? How about sharpening it?
Do I need to keep an ice cube in my pocket to cool the chisel blade for a
better, smoother cut? Or does it cut better warm?

Puckdropper
--
If you're quiet, your teeth never touch your ankles.

To email me directly, send a message to puckdropper (at) fastmail.fm

t wrote:

> How clean a cut do you get out of that puppy on veneer? Our single
> axis CNC chews the shit out of solid oak. I'd hate to see what it did
> to sub 1/32" stuff.

A sharp cutter will do a pretty good job. The edge will not be as sharp
as if it'd been cut with a scalpel, but the result (after sanding) will
be indistinguishable.

I didn't take any pictures when I machined mahogany veneer. I did take
some close-up photos of the (much fuzzier) edges produced with a 1/32"
bit in some 3/4" baltic birch, and they can be seen at
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Projects/Bevel/ exactly as they came off the
machine. In making those parts, the gross cuts were made with a 1/4" end
mill that was about ready for sharpening and the fine cuts were made
with a 1/32" end mill that had only about an hour of cutting time.

> I'm fascinated by the concept but worried about the real world
> problems.
>
> A triple inlay means that you hog out an initial square (in this
> case), glue in the base veneer, hog out the reduced square (once
> again, in this case), glue that veneer in and level it off enough for
> the next step, and then incise for the numeral (see supra).

With the CNC approach, you can cut all the parts and then assemble
working from the outside toward the center. The little JBot is good to
(-0,+1/4800"), so there's not much need to worry about whether parts
will fit properly.

> I know that I took most of six hours to do this but I don't see how
> the bot can reduce the time to anything like what you talked about
> earlier.

Well, hogging out the cherry will take the most time because it involves
the longest toolpath - but it's only a 1.25" square so it won't really
take all that long. The other parts are simple 2D shapes that only need
single-pass profile cuts. With a 2.5"/sec feed rate, it really
wouldn't take long.

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/

t wrote:

> If anyone has a better way of doing this, I'd like to hear about it.

The following dropped into my mailbox this morning. I've never done an
inlay by hand, so I'll just pass it along without comment:

<<
If you post again about the inlay that Tom Watson said took too long,
could you pass on that he did it the wrong way. When doing it all by
hand, it is much easier to do when you start with the inner most piece,
get that to the right size. Then, use a sharp knife going around that
piece to score the design on the next piece and cut that out. Trying to
fit a piece to a cutout is really difficult. Adjusting the cutout to fit
the piece is much easier.
>>

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/

Robatoy wrote:
> On Oct 20, 6:19 pm, t <[email protected]> wrote:

>> This is really interesting. Can you give me a line on some reading
>> material about the basics of CNC routing?

No, I can't. Manuals for the ShopBot are available for public download -
you can see what's available at http://www.shopbottools.com/support.htm
- but I should warn you that ShopBot uses a proprietary programming
language for their machines. Still, the ShopBot documentation is not a
bad introduction.

The industry standard CNC programming language is commonly called G-code
and a quick Google search on "g-code" produced some 740,000 hits, the
first of which was a fairly good Wikipedia reference article.

> I must warn you. Betty Ford is opening a wing just for CNC freaks.
>
> I took the plunge, I blame Morris.
>
> You haven't seen Steve Knight here for a while, eh, Tom?... Well?
>
> Morris...looks like you have a fresh one.............

Yeah, yeah, yeah - blame it on me. I like it for two reasons: [1] It
does way more accurate work than I can, and [2] it provides a reasonable
way for me to get boring production work done without /me/ having to do
it all and without having to worry about some semi-skilled person
cutting his/her fingers off.

It /is/ fun to play with - and if you're willing to build your own, you
can probably do that for less than the cost of a Jessem router table,
Mast-R-Lift, and a top-of-the line dovetail jig.

One source of stepper motors and controller cards is www.hobbycnc.com
and you can find freely downloadable control software at
www.dakeng.com/turbo.html - both can be seen on the web page at the link
below.

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Projects/JBot/

On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 17:11:53 -0700, Zz Yzx <[email protected]>
wrote:

>
>>If anyone has a better way of doing this, I'd like to hear about it.
>
>Need a pic.
>
>-Zz


Pix posted on ABPW.

This photo is prior to sanding flat and coloring in but it should give
you the general idea.


tom watson

jo4hn wrote:
> t wrote:
>> I did a smallish inlay today that was 1 1/4" square in its gross
>> dimensions.
>>
>> I first cut and excavated a 1 1/4" square into the cherry chest that I
>> was working on. Then I cut, fit and glued in a square of Ceylonese
>> Satinwood veneer. Then I cut and excavated that to fit a 7/8" square
>> of Central American Redheart that was sawn out to slightly more than
>> the thickness of the Satinwood veneer, leaving a border of the
>> Satinwood showing. Then I cut a numeral "1" out of holly on the
>> bandsaw, rasped, filed and sanded, and set that in the center of the
>> Redheart square. leaving a scant 3/32" space at top and bottom showing
>> on the Redheart.
>>
>> This took me almost six hours!
>>
>> If anyone has a better way of doing this, I'd like to hear about it.
>>
>>
>>
>> tom watson
>>
>>
>> (who didn't get to put the first coat of finish on the chest today)
>>
>>
> I use my Sawzall. Does great inlay work. Augmented with a hand sledge
> and a cold chisel.
> boop,
> jo4hn

Just remember to never force any fit. Use a bigger hammer.

t wrote:
> I did a smallish inlay today that was 1 1/4" square in its gross
> dimensions.
>
> I first cut and excavated a 1 1/4" square into the cherry chest that I
> was working on. Then I cut, fit and glued in a square of Ceylonese
> Satinwood veneer. Then I cut and excavated that to fit a 7/8" square
> of Central American Redheart that was sawn out to slightly more than
> the thickness of the Satinwood veneer, leaving a border of the
> Satinwood showing. Then I cut a numeral "1" out of holly on the
> bandsaw, rasped, filed and sanded, and set that in the center of the
> Redheart square. leaving a scant 3/32" space at top and bottom showing
> on the Redheart.
>
> This took me almost six hours!
>
> If anyone has a better way of doing this, I'd like to hear about it.
>
>
>
> tom watson
>
>
> (who didn't get to put the first coat of finish on the chest today)
>
>
I use my Sawzall. Does great inlay work. Augmented with a hand sledge
and a cold chisel.
boop,
jo4hn

On Oct 20, 8:05=A0pm, Morris Dovey <[email protected]> wrote:
> Robatoy wrote:
> > On Oct 20, 6:19 pm, t <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> This is really interesting. =A0Can you give me a line on some reading
> >> material about the basics of CNC routing?
>
> No, I can't. Manuals for the ShopBot are available for public download -
> you can see what's available athttp://www.shopbottools.com/support.htm
> - but I should warn you that ShopBot uses a proprietary programming
> language for their machines. Still, the ShopBot documentation is not a
> bad introduction.
>
> The industry standard CNC programming language is commonly called G-code
> and a quick Google search on "g-code" produced some 740,000 hits, the
> first of which was a fairly good Wikipedia reference article.
>
> > I must warn you. Betty Ford is opening a wing just for CNC freaks.
>
> > I took the plunge, I blame Morris.
>
> > You haven't seen Steve Knight here for a while, eh, Tom?... Well?
>
> > Morris...looks like you have a fresh one.............
>
> Yeah, yeah, yeah - blame it on me. I like it for two reasons: [1] It
> does way more accurate work than I can, and [2] it provides a reasonable
> way for me to get boring production work done without /me/ having to do
> it all and without having to worry about some semi-skilled person
> cutting his/her fingers off.
>
> It /is/ fun to play with - and if you're willing to build your own, you
> can probably do that for less than the cost of a Jessem router table,
> Mast-R-Lift, and a top-of-the line dovetail jig.
>
> One source of stepper motors and controller cards iswww.hobbycnc.com
> and you can find freely downloadable control software atwww.dakeng.com/tu=
rbo.html- both can be seen on the web page at the link
> below.
>
> --
> Morris Dovey
> DeSoto Solar
> DeSoto, Iowa USAhttp://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Projects/JBot/

I found the FlashCut pdf very informative. It deals with G-Code.

On Oct 20, 6:19=A0pm, t <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 22:06:37 -0500, Morris Dovey <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> >A sharp cutter will do a pretty good job. The edge will not be as sharp
> >as if it'd been cut with a scalpel, but the result (after sanding) will
> >be indistinguishable.
>
> >I didn't take any pictures when I machined mahogany veneer. I did take
> >some close-up photos of the (much fuzzier) edges produced with a 1/32"
> >bit in some 3/4" baltic birch, and they can be seen at
> >http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Projects/Bevel/exactly as they came off the
> >machine. In making those parts, the gross cuts were made with a 1/4" end
> >mill that was about ready for sharpening and the fine cuts were made
> >with a 1/32" end mill that had only about an hour of cutting time.
>
> >> I'm fascinated by the concept but worried about the real world
> >> problems.
>
> >> A triple inlay means that you hog out an initial square (in this
> >> case), glue in the base veneer, hog out the reduced square (once
> >> again, in this case), glue that veneer in and level it off enough for
> >> the next step, and then incise for the numeral (see supra).
>
> >With the CNC approach, you can cut all the parts and then assemble
> >working from the outside toward the center. The little JBot is good to
> >(-0,+1/4800"), so there's not much need to worry about whether parts
> >will fit properly.
>
> >> I know that I took most of six hours to do this but I don't see how
> >> the bot can reduce the time to anything like what you talked about
> >> earlier.
>
> >Well, hogging out the cherry will take the most time because it involves
> >the longest toolpath - but it's only a 1.25" square so it won't really
> >take all that long. The other parts are simple 2D shapes that only need
> > =A0single-pass profile cuts. With a 2.5"/sec feed rate, it really
> >wouldn't take long.
>
> This is really interesting. =A0Can you give me a line on some reading
> material about the basics of CNC routing?
>
> tom watson

I must warn you. Betty Ford is opening a wing just for CNC freaks.

I took the plunge, I blame Morris.

You haven't seen Steve Knight here for a while, eh, Tom?... Well?

Morris...looks like you have a fresh one.............

On Oct 19, 10:47=A0pm, jo4hn <[email protected]> wrote:
> t wrote:
> > I did a smallish inlay today that was 1 1/4" square in its gross
> > dimensions.
>
> > I first cut and excavated a 1 1/4" square into the cherry chest that I
> > was working on. =A0Then I cut, fit and glued in a square of Ceylonese
> > Satinwood veneer. =A0Then I cut =A0and excavated that to fit a 7/8" squ=
are
> > of Central American Redheart that was sawn out to slightly more than
> > the thickness of the Satinwood veneer, leaving a border of the
> > Satinwood showing. =A0 Then I cut a numeral "1" out of holly on the
> > bandsaw, rasped, filed and sanded, and set that in the center of the
> > Redheart square. leaving a scant 3/32" space at top and bottom showing
> > on the Redheart.
>
> > This took me almost six hours!
>
> > If anyone has a better way of doing this, I'd like to hear about it.
>
> > tom watson
>
> > (who didn't get to put the first coat of finish on the chest today)
>
> I use my Sawzall. =A0Does great inlay work. =A0Augmented with a hand sled=
ge
> and a cold chisel.
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 boop,
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 jo4hn

I use an adze for my inlay work. I call it Adztech.

groan,
r

"t" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >> This took me almost six hours!
> >between 15 and 20 minutes using my 'bot. <vbg>
> You really do Suck, Morris.

One might argue that he got six hours of pleasure out of building it. Morris
got maybe twenty minutes worth with most of that pleasure going to his thumb
which pushed the button to get the 'bot started.

On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:09:57 -0500, Morris Dovey <[email protected]>
wrote:

>t wrote:
>
>> This took me almost six hours!
>>
>> If anyone has a better way of doing this, I'd like to hear about it.
>
>Hmm - I think I might have been able to shorten the total time to
>between 15 and 20 minutes using my 'bot. <vbg>


You really do Suck, Morris.

And I mean that in the best possible way.


tom watson

>If anyone has a better way of doing this, I'd like to hear about it.

Need a pic.

-Zz

On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 22:06:37 -0500, Morris Dovey <[email protected]>
wrote:

>A sharp cutter will do a pretty good job. The edge will not be as sharp
>as if it'd been cut with a scalpel, but the result (after sanding) will
>be indistinguishable.
>
>I didn't take any pictures when I machined mahogany veneer. I did take
>some close-up photos of the (much fuzzier) edges produced with a 1/32"
>bit in some 3/4" baltic birch, and they can be seen at
>http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Projects/Bevel/ exactly as they came off the
>machine. In making those parts, the gross cuts were made with a 1/4" end
>mill that was about ready for sharpening and the fine cuts were made
>with a 1/32" end mill that had only about an hour of cutting time.
>
>> I'm fascinated by the concept but worried about the real world
>> problems.
>>
>> A triple inlay means that you hog out an initial square (in this
>> case), glue in the base veneer, hog out the reduced square (once
>> again, in this case), glue that veneer in and level it off enough for
>> the next step, and then incise for the numeral (see supra).
>
>With the CNC approach, you can cut all the parts and then assemble
>working from the outside toward the center. The little JBot is good to
>(-0,+1/4800"), so there's not much need to worry about whether parts
>will fit properly.
>
>> I know that I took most of six hours to do this but I don't see how
>> the bot can reduce the time to anything like what you talked about
>> earlier.
>
>Well, hogging out the cherry will take the most time because it involves
>the longest toolpath - but it's only a 1.25" square so it won't really
>take all that long. The other parts are simple 2D shapes that only need
> single-pass profile cuts. With a 2.5"/sec feed rate, it really
>wouldn't take long.


This is really interesting. Can you give me a line on some reading
material about the basics of CNC routing?


tom watson

On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:42:02 -0500, Morris Dovey <[email protected]>
wrote:

>t wrote:
>> On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:09:57 -0500, Morris Dovey <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> t wrote:
>>>
>>>> This took me almost six hours!
>>>>
>>>> If anyone has a better way of doing this, I'd like to hear about it.
>>> Hmm - I think I might have been able to shorten the total time to
>>> between 15 and 20 minutes using my 'bot. <vbg>
>>
>>
>> You really do Suck, Morris.
>>
>> And I mean that in the best possible way.
>
>Well, the job could go faster but I allowed for programming time and for
>a trial run on scrap veneer.
>
>A /third/ run could probably be done in under a minute - but you'd
>probably still want to spend at least a minute gluing and another minute
>and a half sanding.
>
>What's it going to take to get you to build one of these things for
>yourself?


Check the pix out on ABPW and give me a clue.


tom watson

On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:02:42 -0500, Morris Dovey <[email protected]>
wrote:

>t wrote:
>> On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:42:02 -0500, Morris Dovey <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> t wrote:
>>>> On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:09:57 -0500, Morris Dovey <[email protected]>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> t wrote:

>> Check the pix out on ABPW and give me a clue.
>
>Not bad. I think I might have run the redheart grain horizontally, but
>that's just me - everybody's an art critic and if you'd done that,
>someone else would have said to run the grain vertically. :-)


I was actually asking for a clue on the ability of the bot to
replicate the triple inlay.

I have a 32" x 16" cherry box elevation with strong horizontal grain
and a 1 1/4"square inlay laid into it.

The choice to run both the Satinwood and the Redheart on the vertical
was to focus the eye. The Holly, naturally, has no apparent grain.

Might be bad visual theory. I've certainly been wrong before.



tom watson