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I have wanted to cut something like this for a while and this looked like a good project to test in Carveco. I knew the cutting would be fairly straight forward but was unsure how long it would take because I haven't calibrated this type of cutting in Carveco. The material is 1/2" MDF and it took 40 minutes cutting at 200 ipm, one pass with a 60° 5/8" diameter V bit, 18k rpm, 0.03125" stepover, and cut depth of 3/16". Except for the perimeter cuts it rarely got close to 200 ipm. I probably could have set it to 400 ipm and the results would have been about the same.

My goal was to make it look old, somewhat weathered, like it had been discovered in the sand on Tatooine and had been there for years. In other words, 'pristine and perfect' was NOT my goal. :wink:

The finishing steps were as follows - 1) two fairly heavy coats of Nitrocellulose sanding sealer, 2) one really heavy coat of Rust Oleum brown Hammered paint, 3) brushed thinned black acrylic into the recessed areas and wiped it off, 4) placed in oven at 170° for a couple of minutes and turned off but allowed the piece to stay in until the oven cooled, and 5) one good coat of Nitrocellulose semi-gloss followed quickly by a lighter dusting coat.

The lacquer caused the underlying coats to crackle a bit and gave me the desired look, at least I am pleased with the way it came out.

On the CNC -

Two coats of sealer -

Brown Hammered paint -

After black acrylic and wiped off -

Aged look -

Aged look close up -

Enjoy!
David

 

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Thanks, Rick! It's for a friend's 6-year old son. Now my 32-year old son wants one! LOL! They're both huge Star Wars fans.

David

 

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That looks great. How much time to carve that out?

This took 40 minutes to cut, Steve. I am doing it again but in a different way (posted below) and I think it will be closer to 25 minutes.

David

 

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There are two ways to cut this and I learned the difference AFTER I cut it this way. It's what I would call the negative but I plan to cut another in the positive. Here's a screenshot and you can see the difference. It will also cut quicker this way and give a look that I believe I'll prefer.

David

 

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Busy morning cutting Longworth chucks and Star Wars Aztec calendars. I cut three 12" calendars and one 9" calendar.

Two of the 12" calendars were cut with a 60° bit, one at 250 ipm followed by the next at 125 ipm. In some of the details I can see pieces broken so I slowed it down to see if the feed rate had anything to do with it - it didn't. And it only made about 3 minutes difference in the total time because it never gets up to 250 ipm except when cutting the groove around the perimeter.

So I switched to a 90° bit and all the cuts came out much better and no pieces broken. In the end, given the way I will paint and distress these, it's not going to make any real difference anyway, but I just want them to be as close to perfect as I can get.

A couple of hours cutting calendars produced this -

Tomorrow I'll do my finish and see how these come out.

David

 

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Thanks, Barb!

David