This week we're focusing in on the V- carve inlay process of this clapperboard
project. What we love about this technique is that you can incorporate it
in a variety of ways to fit your own project. So stay to the end for a more
detailed walkthrough in Vectrex V carve for a "how to" on programmed the tool paths.
Essentially we're creating two parts. One is the pocket of the design a recessed
area in the body of the clapperboard and the inlay, or the plug, which will be
glued into the body of the design. I went ahead and made two glue ups. One larger
walnut glue up for the body of the clapper board and the smaller maple glue
up for the chevron design. We'll square the sticks on the jointer and cut them to
length.
After gluing them up I'll send them through the planer to level the material
and cut them square on the table saw.
First I'll cut the maple insert. We'll zerop x y & z using our Auto Z and corner finding
touch plate. I'll attach the material using composite
fasteners, this is a great way to attach material to the bed. You might choose
the pilot the holes first when using hardwood to prevent splitting. We'll run
the pocket clearing pass first and then the 60 degree bit to lessen the
amount of material the V bit has to remove.
For the body of the clapper board I chose to use metal fasteners and piloted the
holes with the CNC for my work holding technique. Check out the description
below for video on how we did this. We'll re-zero our z-axis with the same 60
degree V bit and run our v carve tool path.
Then we'll run our quarter-inch fit for the V carve clearing, the acrylic insert
pocket and the exterior profile.
I added large strong 2D tabs to the exterior profile to hold the clapper body to
the drop material. If you followed this order of operations we don't have to CNC
the parts for the inlay, glue it up and then put it back on the bed again
to CNC the exterior profile cut. I'll remove any extra of the raised
material on the edges of the maple inlay and now you can see how the two
parts fit together.
After we do a little clean-up on both parts we can glue in our insert. I'll
brush in the glue for an even distribution.
Using a few homemade clamps I was gifted recently by a friend of mine. I'll clamp
it up and let this sit overnight.
We happen to have a large bandsaw in our shop that's handy for re-sawing and for
projects like this. If you don't have access to one no worries, you can use
your CNC to remove any excess maple. Similar to as if you were leveling your
spoil board.
We also happen to have a drum sander. A palm sander with a low grit would work
just fine too.
Now I can cut out the parts from the drop material. Again, if you don't have a
bandsaw a coping saw or jigsaw would be a great alternative for this. I can sand
down my tabs on the belt sander or using a flush trim bit to clean them up. I'll do
some finish sanding with my orbital sander and break the edges with a small
chamfer. And we're ready for finish! Here I'm using a satin wipe-on poly though
it's really up to you and your aesthetic preference. Now we can move on to other
elements of this project including CNC machining the acrylic insert and CNC
plasma cutting the custom hinge plates. Thanks everyone for watching, keep an eye
out for more pro maker videos and stick around if you like to learn more about
your V-carve file setups for this project. See y'all in the shop.
welcome to our vectric walkthrough of the V carve inlay tool path programming.
Here's my Vcarve file of the clapperboard project. I've just drawn out
my design in all 2d vectors. Let's preview the current hole paths we
already have programmed. We have a pocket or the acrylic or whiteboard insert, the
exterior profile and the hold-down pilot holes.
Let's touch base on the concepts of how these parts come together. This is an
extremely helpful diagram made by Vectric and you can find a link in the
description below. The female part is pretty straightforward.
First we'll determine how deep you'd like the engraving to be on the
clapperboard and this will be an important point of
reference for later on. If you increase or decrease the flat depth this will
adjust how much space you have for your glue gap and for the air gap above the
inlay for the bandsaw blade to cut through. We recommend doing a few tests
first. You can adjust as necessary to make the
parts fit just right, if you need a larger or smaller glue gap. Now I'll go to my
vCarve file and select the chevron design on the body of the clapperboard. Let's
create a Vcarve tool path. Pretty straightforward, we'll make this a flat
depth of 0.2 inches. I'll select the 60 degree V bit as my tool and the quarter
inch bit as the clearing bit. Let's preview those tool paths in context now.
Here you can see those large tabs that will hold the body in place while we do
our inlay glue and for us to trim off the excess material. I'll go back to my
2d window select the inlay design and copy the vector then save the file.
Now we can create a new file for a maple inlay. I'll make my material size
slightly larger than the design. I can paste the design into our new file, this
will be for our maple plug part of the inlay. In order for the parts to fit
together we have to mirror the design. I'll flip this horizontally. Then I'll
draw a rough box around the outside of my material accounting for any hold down
techniques they might be using. I'll leave some space on the edges for the
composite fasteners.
Now we can create our V carve tool path. I'll select the
chevron design and the box around it. Let's make this our depth of 0.15 inches
I'll make the flat depth about 50 thousands which will leave some room for
the glue in the bandsaw blade. There's still some wiggle room here so you can
make adjustments as you need to. We'll just be sure that our router bit
selection matches that of the V curve tool path from the body of the clapper
board.
Let's preview those toolpaths. Looks like we're ready for lights camera
action! Thanks everyone for watching, for more
information about cnc router parts machines you can check us out at
cncrouterparts.com
I look forward to sharing more technics projects and build videos with you very soon