Jewelry Box

[yenne]

Hello everyone! It's my hope to post a weekly (or thereabouts) project demonstrating some interesting feature of the CarveWright machine. Comments, suggestions, and requests are welcome!

This installment is some project files and instructions for creating a jewelry box like the one on our Results page. All of these project pieces demonstrate the use of patterns laid out within rectangular regions.



The bits you'll need are the carving bit and the cutting bit (the ones that came with the machine), a 1/2" ballnose for the edge rout around the lid, and the 3/8" straight jointing bit for cutting rabbets on the reverse side of the lid and on the top of the base. If you don't have some of these bits, you can modify the project files to use something else or remove those routs.

All the pieces are intended for 1/2" thick wood. The top is 8-3/8 by 5-3/8, the long sides are 8-1/8 by 2-1/2, the short sides are 5-3/16 by 2-1/2, and the base is 8-1/2 by 5-1/2.

I strongly recommend letting the machine keep the main workpiece under rollers at all times, rather than you manually cutting out the appropriately-sized pieces. If you place a long or wide enough board in, all pieces can be placed and cut from the same piece of wood, keeping its ends under the rollers, then broken apart when all are finished.

When uploading these pieces, the software will likely prompt you to auto-jig since the cuts will interfere with the aux roller. Since you plan to place all the pieces on a single board (right?), you can select Manual Jig or just Ignore. The lid (with the cuts on the reverse side) can actually interfere with the aux roller when flipped, so you might want to go ahead and let the machine auto-jig the lid. All this will do is prevent it from being placed in a position that could interfere when flipped.

Start with the lid, since it has carvings on both sides, requiring you to start with the back side and then flip the board over to the front. When flipping, remember to flip across the width rather than end-to-end.

As the machine cuts out the side pieces, the 1/8" feathering along each end may chip away to varying degrees, depending on the type of wood used. Do not panic, as this feathering is going to be cut off anyway when beveling the edges below. The feathering is too close to the edge not to chip out, but I didn't do anything about it because we're just going to cut it off anyway.

After cutting out each of the pieces, use a miter saw or equivalent to place a 45-degree bevel on the back edges of the side pieces so they can be glued together on the base. The GUI and machine can be finangled to place the bevels automatically, but the machine currently isn't so great about beveling a board with carvings on the back (without a jig), and doing it in the GUI would create more board flips, complicating the process. Far easier to just do it manually, IMHO.

Enjoy!

[Dan-Woodman]

Britt
Thank you for the much needed tutoring.
How do we go about putting all the pieces on one board when they download as individual projects, or do we upload to memory card as individual projects and use jog to position them on one board at the machine. Another question is if you place all projects on a large piece of wood , the machine will ask if you want to cut wood to size or size project to fit board,witch will alter the size of some pieces .
Can you explain exactly what happens in auto-jig, manual jig, etc.
I for one am reluctant to use some of these features without knowing what the machine will do for fear of crashing it. Automated machines in the woodworking world did'nt exist til now , so us woodworkers have a lot to learn. later Daniel

[cajunpen]

Thanks Britt for the project. I am still waiting for my CW to arrive - hopefully all of the information I am gathering will make more sense once the machine arrives. 2 weeks and holding

Bill

[mailman]

Britt, I want to add my thanks to the list. This should be a terrific idea for us that don't know what we are doing. I am expecting my CW any day now. Close to 3 weeks and I am getting very anxious. Is this box a good project for beginners or are there simpler projects that come with the machine to work on first? Everyone should appreciate you uploading projects to work on.

thanks again!

[yenne]

How do we go about putting all the pieces on one board when they download as individual projects

You are correct that you can download the pieces as individual projects and then place them onto the board with the jog to position feature. When you tell the machine to cut to size, it leaves "tabbies" around the edges so that the pieces don't actually fall out. You can continue to carve other projects onto the board -- as long as you don't lift the head, the machine will remember the board's dimensions and will not have to re-measure.

One quick note -- those of you who have machines are aware that after finding the bit tip optically, the machine barely touches the bit to the top of the board in order to find the surface. If carvings already exist on the board within an inch or so of the left edge, the machine might try to touch the bit over one of the carvings and either fail or get the wrong idea where the actual surface is. You can hit the Stop key while it's touching, which will present you with a few options. Option (3) is to jog to the position where you'd like it to touch. This is obviously useful when carvings already exist on the board, but is also useful when the workpiece is something like a cabinet door whose inner section is lower than the outer frame, and you intend to carve the inner section.

A nice thing about this project is that you get to play with a lot of these little features of the machine. Grab some cheap wood and have fun!

Can you explain exactly what happens in auto-jig, manual jig, etc.

All auto-jig does is ensure that the project is offset sufficiently from the board's edge(s) to prevent one of a number of types of potential interference with the rollers or the aux sensor. Basically it requires a slightly longer or wider board than the project's dimensions, and the machine can cut to size when finished.

Manual jig means that you will manually position the project either on a jig or within a larger piece in order to prevent interference, and that you are taking responsibility to make sure this happens. Ignore is basically the same thing, or just an outright override if you, being smarter than the software, know that it is wrong and no interference will actually happen.

I for one am reluctant to use some of these features without knowing what the machine will do for fear of crashing it.

There shouldn't be any way, with this project anyway, to break your machine, so I'd recommend that you play with it on some cheap wood to see what happens. There are a lot of neat things to play with in this project, so have some fun!

[yenne]

Is this box a good project for beginners or are there simpler projects that come with the machine to work on first?

I'd think that a beginner would have just as much fun with this project, as it takes advantage of many different features of the machine.

Feel free to start slower, of course. Cutting some simpler designs first might very well get your comfort level a bit higher. Right now we don't ship any sample projects with the machine (other than the tutorial), but I plan to post many more here on the forum.

[nicobie]

Britt,

Thank you for the sample project. Posting these on a semi regular basis will be very help full for us newbs to CNC machining. It will be nice to see what these tools are capable of doing.

nic

[MAX COX]

CW/BRITT- THANKS FOR THE INFORMATION ON JEWELRY BOX. I DID
SOME TEST ON PINE AND THEY CAME OUT GREAT. I AM GOING TO
MAKE ONE FROM OAK AND CHERRY TO SEE THE RESULTS. KEEP UP
THE GOOD WORK. MAX

[JimStaley]

I downloaded the patterns and tried to change the thickness to 0.75" to match some scrap wood. I got a response "Your requested dimensions are below the minimum size." This is strange because I increased the board thickness. Also, it told me that the minimum size was 6x1.75x.25 That's surprising becaue the size came up 5.188x2.50x.500

This is my first project and I don't inderstand these messages. I have the latest software. What do I do?

[yenne]

"Your requested dimensions are below the minimum size."

Don't panic. It's just letting you know that the machine can't cut a piece less than 6" in length, and that you'll need to cut it out of a larger piece (which the machine will do automatically). You can just click the "Proceed" button and it will let you edit the too-small piece.