So today is officially day one of starting the new vlog. Unfortunately, we have no power.
So yeah, this has made things a little bit more interesting. I'm actually going to pack
up some stuff here. At home, we'll do some video editing. I'll show you the project that
I'm working on, getting full video edited for. So anyways, let's pick up an office chair,
get the laptop, everything like that, head home. And we'll work from there for today.
So, a little bit off to a rough start, but we'll make the best of it.
So, after a few trips back to the office, we're finally set up here at home. And I can
get to editing this video. It's of making a bed for my daughter. But it's definitely
a really cool build. I'm excited to have this. This is a lot of footage, there's over 50
hours total of actual footage that I need to go through and make into a video. So anyways,
that's what I'm going to be working on today. And yeah, let me know what you think about
this. And we'll get started on another project probably tomorrow that we can make into another
project video. So, for now, let's get to the editing. That's what I can do right now. So,
let's get to it.
Welcome to day two of the vlog. Yesterday was a little bit uninteresting. But today
we're gonna be doing a little bit more. We're going to be getting the S M.700 CNC ready
to go. Also, we'll get to work on the design for this project. It's pretty special project.
We'll get into that and you'll kind of see that as it's evolving. But I'm pretty excited
about this one. So, let's head into the office and get everything designed out.
I got my piece all designed up in Illustrator. Really happy with the way that that looks.
Absolutely love this. This is based off of some designs the wife sent me that she liked
and decided to make it a little bit different, make it my own. Got it transferred over into
Vectric. And this is what it looks like. That's gonna take some work.
I need to first get everything separated out, since it'll all be individual layers layered
on top of each other with different colors. So, I'm moving everything around here. Then,
I'll open a second Vectric window and move everything around. This will be for the eighth
inch plywood. I'm setting a pocket toolpath here with a 1/16th inch bit. We did just release
a video talking about the Vectric files, the tool files that are available on our website.
So, you can definitely click right up there to see how you can get this for yourself.
Because I film everything that I do. I set up the toolpaths a little bit differently
and do individual toolpaths. Normally, you’d just be able to make this a single toolpath
that do its own thing. But I separate everything out so that I can get different camera angles,
all that kind of stuff. The other larger pieces don't have nearly as much detail. So, I'm
using the 46200-K-8th inch down cut bit to carve in all of those. And I use some tabs
to hold everything in place since they're a little bit larger.
So that design is now officially done. So, we can get started on the CNC tomorrow and
get everything actually cut. We got all the materials back here. And yeah, it should be
pretty fun. So, we'll see you tomorrow and get this all cut out.
We're ready to get started for the day. Started off doing some computer work this morning.
But now we're ready to get set up on the STEPCRAFT M.700 CNC. We got this all over here on the
table. So, I’ll need to get that cut down, put a supplementary waste board over here
and get going on that. So that way we can get all of those pieces cut without cutting
into the aluminum waste board on the machine. So, let's get going.
Let's just get this ripped down over at the table saw real quick. I'm using an 80-tooth
blade here. All of the links to all the tools used in this video are down below in the description.
So definitely check that out. This is ready to go and then I'll just use some XFasten
brand Double-Sided Tape. If I had really good luck with this stuff, it doesn't leave any
residue on the wood or on the CNC machine at all. So that's what I will be using here.
I lined everything up with one of the T-Track slots on the STEPCRAFT M.700 CNC, just getting
all of the bits all set up here and added to the Auto Tool Change System. This system
is pneumatic. I manually added this one so it was ready to go.
We need to create just a line reference here. That way I have a reference point where to
locate all my pieces. That way I can use the same x and y, zero point. So, let's go ahead
and create that file real quick. We’ll use the 46200-K 1/8th inch downcut bit to cut
that. So, let's go create that file.
This is a really simple design. So basically, we'll create a new worksheet that's a little
bit undersized from the size of the board. I'll create a square and then go into the
node editing tool and delete two of the spans on the rectangle. So, this is really pretty
simple. And it's a really easy way to get a nice square reference point. I'll go through
and set up a profile tool path at 1/16th of an inch depth with the 46200-K 1/8th inch
down cut bit to get that line created so that we have that reference point.
So, I set the depth of cut here. And then I want to make sure that I select on the line
instead of outside or inside of the profile. I'll name it and then we'll just get that
exported for the CNC and it's ready to go. I saved it to a thumb drive. Went over to
the computer that I used to run the CNC and opened that up there. And you can see that
we get a little preview of what that's going to look like. Now it's time to get all the
cameras set up. This is easily something that takes just as much time as doing everything
else on these projects.
So, we set our x in y zero point just on the inside there. And as you can see, we're setting
up another shot here. Once I have the x, y and z zero set, I can hit the cycle Start
button and we will start cutting. So, it's moving back to its X & Y zero point and just
going through. This is a real time cut. The down cut action of the bit leaves a really
nice clean top surface. And we just went through there. So, this is done. I will get it vacuumed
off, and we have our reference point. So now we can move onto a test piece here. I realized
that I was using a tool that I had never used before with the small 1/16th inch radius point
round over bit.
So, I wanted to make a test. That way, I ensure I get my settings right on the test piece,
not on the final piece. So, this is one of the few CNCs that I've seen that has an auto
tool change with a desktop size machine. It's a really great feature. It goes through. It
uses pneumatics to pick up those bits and drop them off. And it works really well. So,
it speeds things up drastically when you're trying to do a project with multiple bits.
So, we're starting out with that point round over bit. And as you can see, it just leaves
a tiny little radius here. I accidently set the Z zero position a little bit too low or
too high. So, I went through and did a second pass after dropping the Z position a little
bit lower and got a perfect result. Really pretty happy with the way that that worked.
We went back and dropped that bit off, picked up the 8th inch compression bit. A compression
bit has an upcut portion and a down cut portion, which will leave you with a clean top and
bottom surface. Unfortunately, I messed this one up and didn't set the Z zero. So, we made
a mistake. Mistakes were definitely made. I broke the bit. I definitely didn't hit the
E-Stop button fast enough there. And it actually plunged all the way through the MDF. And I'm
not sure if it touched the aluminum bed or not. But we got that pulled out. Luckily,
I keep two of these bits. At least the bits that I use all the time, I keep at least two
of those. So, I had another one ready to go. We got that switched out. I set the Z zero
position this time, and it went much better.
So, we went through and I did this in two passes at a quarter inch depth per pass, and
it's going through at about 40 inches per minute. And like I said with that compression
bit, the upcut portion leaves a nice clean top - bottom surface. The down cut leaves
a nice, clean top surface. So, you just need to make sure that that first pass is below
the upcut portion of the bit. So, using a multi-tool, we'll get those tabs trimmed out
and get it pulled up. This plywood is paper backed plywood. It's just some scrap that
I had. And as you can see, there's a piece that kind of tore off there. But this one
is done. The point round over a bit is just a tiny little radius. But it leaves enough
to break the edge. It's a little bit easier to do here on the CNC than it would be on
a router table. Just because the piece is so small, it makes it a little bit harder
to hold.
So, we picked up the point round over a bit here. And you can see a little bit better
with the chips all gone [0:07:37 unclear]. What that's doing is just rounding over that
edge. I tried to pull it off the tripod and get a closer up shot. Unfortunately, they
don't always work out as well as you would have hoped. The autofocus definitely kind
of failed me here. But it's part of the process, I guess. So, these are both done. And this
piece went flying. It went probably 10 feet away from the CNC. Went, picked it up, used
the multi tool again to get those all trimmed out, and the other two letters are done.
So, we'll move over to the router table just getting the shot and everything set up. Using
the MR0102 Mini Round Over Bit. This bit has a 3/16-inch diameter bearing. So even on an
8th inch bit cut, it can get right into those corners. It also is a smaller diameter bit.
So it's less likely to grab your piece. So, I used it to trim all of these tabs as well
as the Micro Jig Grip Block to help with holding all of these so that way they wouldn't slip
out of my hands or anything. Again, with that paperbacked plywood, it leaves a little bit
of fraying on the edge, because it's really difficult to cut paper like that. So just
a quick hit with some 220-grit sandpaper, and it's all cleaned up and you don't even
know that anything is there.
So that is now done. We got all our testing done. We have our files created, everything
like that. We're ready to start making the actual piece. So, I'm pretty happy with the
way that that turned out. I don't really like wasting anything. So I’ll probably use the
letters somewhere else in his room and kind of go from there. So, if you haven't figured
out, this is a project for our son who's on the way. He's due April 4, and we are super
excited about it. We have my little girl Katie, and she is now 3 and we're welcoming another
little one to the world.
So, we're really excited about that. His name is gonna be Eli, if that wasn't already obvious.
So anyways, on the next one, we will actually get to cutting the real pieces. We've got
the 8th inch plywood here and quarter inch plywood sitting over here on the bench. So
now that we have everything created, we are ready to go.
So anyways, thank you guys so much for watching. Definitely drop a comment down below, let
me know what you think. If there's something that you would like to see in these vlog videos,
I would love to hear from you. And maybe we can work in some Q&A time or if there's a
story time that you guys would like to hear about, anything about me or the workshop or
tools today in general, feel free to drop a comment down below. We'll do our best to
get to those. Be sure to subscribe so that you see all of that and check out another
video right over here. And we'll catch you guys back out here on the next one. Have a
great day, everybody.