So, I got tired of waiting for a spindle, and I decided to grab a cheapo set of carbide burrs from Amazon and mount up my Dremel 4000 to play in some foam insulation. Although I do have more fun than I’ll admit cutting shapes with the drag knife, and even just drawing with a pen, I’ve never gone any farther than that. Therefore, I’m going carefully, and I have some questions.
My first question is, what burr shapes are actually useful for normal people? I get the feeling that simple pocketing is best done with a cylinder (with end cut), and people seem to like v-cut (proper name seems to be “pointed cone”), and those who do 3D carving seem to use a ball for the finishing. My set came with 10 burrs, but am I really going to use more than two or three of these things?
Second question is, how do I set up the more exotic shapes in Estlcam? I think I have the cylinder worked out, but is there a trick to getting angles and measurements on the others (say, ball and cone), or (long shot here) has someone already done the work for this particular set (which seems to be for sale from all the usual suspects)?
