My first attempt(s)

Hi, after cutting a square and a circle in foam several times (realizing that my X axis was loose), I went directly to something more ambitious. I took a drawing a friend of a friend made, pre-processed it in Inkscape to get vectors and then set it up for a 60 degree V-Carve. Right at the end the machine hit one of my clamps, but it was already 99% done. The wood is oak, 11" wide and 0.75" thick.

For the first attempt this is not bad, I think. I need to clean it up a little still. I saw on YouTube that people spray paint v-carves and then sand it down, I may try this with this one.

Thanks for developing this nifty machine - I had no idea I wanted a CNC until I saw this and built one lol.

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It works great!
You can do several colors also.

That looks great by the way!

That was looking real good!

I went ahead and give it a try. Except oak has too many pores and is difficult to sand down again. But still came out pretty good for the first attempt. Got to cut it still do edges and put some finish on it.

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And I am not sure if I am the only person crazy like this, but I have built this CNC with a specific project in mind. Which is building a puzzle box. I chose the LR2 only to keep my options open for future bigger projects. So … I designed already all the pieces in Inkscape and VCarve and if it works out, then those will be the next pictures posted, including my first inlay attempt.

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I am not sure if I have tried this but one idea would be to “seal” the wood before you do the carving thus sealing the pores. Depending on what you seal with, you might not even have to sand after just wipe.

I am sure I have tried this in an effort to avoid the problem you mention, I cant remember exactly how happy I was.

I am still experimenting.

I have not done much with parts and holding tabs. Forgive my ignorance. How do you remove the holding tabs in something like the inlay picture above? Some kind of coping saw?

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I think it looks great.

I use a hacksaw blade. Then a file and then sanding. I noticed your holding tabs are full height. I usually make mine smaller so it’s less to remove after. I’m not sure what CAM program you use but you should be able to choose a holding tab height. I make mine half the width of the wood or less. Sometimes I can just snap the piece out of the stock.

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I use a keyhole saw, and I cut various thicknesses of the same shape, for the 1/4 wood was almost full thickness, but I just used the defaults of the program I used.

The different shapes, I cut for my “puzzle box”, are glued on top of each other so that I get walnut, cherry, maple, cherry, walnut layers on the outside. There will be free moving/sliding metal pins in the chambers you see on the piece that is not glued yet. This piece will be glued with the visible side down onto the rest of the box. The lid, the one with the inlay will have the disk with the engraving glued underneath. This disc has a little wider slits cut in on the opposite side so that the metal pins can slide in. To close, you insert the lid into the two wider openings and twist it shut. Then when you move the box a little and the pins slide into the disk of the lid. Now it cannot be opened anymore - unless you know the trick. I plan to add one more twist to it to make it more difficult.
For the engraving on the inside, I already re-used the spray paint technique to make the engraving stand out.

After the sign, this was the next project I try to finish using the CNC.

It is amazing to get something cribbled on paper, drawn in inkscape, ported into a gcode program slowly become reality. It is so satisfying. I think reverse engineering some of those Japanese puzzle boxes will become a passion.

sliding pin locking:

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I like watching Chris Ramsey solve puzzles on his channel. This one, in particular, seemed like it would be fun to replicate:

Here is the lid and the box finally glued together and treated with some oil.

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And here is another quick project that I cranked out yesterday. It needs a little sanding still and a finish.

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<voice style=“Venom”>Awww. That’s nice.</voice>

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And two more image of the finally completed puzzle box.


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