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Tugrik
01-08-2007, 06:29 AM
Greetings! Just got our machine over the holidays and we're finally playing with it to figure it out. There's a lot to learn! So far the test-pieces are going OK. Each piece done brings with it a few less errors and a few more lessons learned on how best to do it.

As an example, I did this clock for my friend Dusty. He calls his little workshop "Fur and Iron Choppers" and did a quickie ball-point-pen sketch of the logo he wanted. I buffed it up in Photoshop and turned it into a clock for him, using a Klockit atomic clock movement. He'll be putting it over his workbench as a fun little piece. My favorite part was using greyscale sweeps in Photoshop to make the cross more '3D', fading from the background up to the higher center part.

I carved it out of a block of red oak from the scrap bin at the local Home Depot (dirt cheap). The patterns were done with the standard taper bit and it was cut out with the 1/8th cutting bit. It was then cherrywood stained and hand-painted for the black and red sections.

Problems that I'll fix when I re-do it next time: The raster inside edge of the outer circle is rough because of the tapered 1/16th bit. To fix this, next time I'll use the 1/8th cutting bit to route a simple circle-edge slightly wider there, to 'clean up' the edge. Secondly, the "2" on the 12 got torn up a bit by the taper bit. Solution will be to use a slightly larger font with a slightly less deep cut, so the taper won't be such an issue.

What do folks think?

(PS: as this is my first post, apologies if the images do not attach correctly. I've included his original sketch and the finished first-try at the clock.)