My first ”real” project (4 days from starting design to delivery) for my son’s 40th birthday party in Wisconsin.
I used $9.00 1/2” plywood “project boards”, and 2x4 frames. Logo, lettering and rings are inlaid 1/16” “basswood” from Amazon.
I used Alibre design, then Freecad’s CAM workbench for toolpath (standard “grbl” post processor).
I learned the difficulty with controlling depth of cut… did a lot of chiseled, dremeling, and finally manually routing my pockets to get them close to what I programmed. I saw some sled tipping near the top of my 4 x 8 work area… babysat subsequent cuts up there, but overall I’m pleased with the XY accuracy obtained in my first excursion into the “red” calibration zone.
A bigger problem, I think, is sawdust building up under the sled, raising the Z. I have the dust collector attached. Maybe my old vacuum isn’t powerful enough? I noticed a reference to a bungee. Where?
Fitting the “puzzle pieces” wasn’t too difficult, given a sanding block, belt sander and dremel to clean them up. I painted them first, using ben Moore samples of the official team colors.
Hi Tim. I’m not sure exactly, but the bottom edge is about 2 feet out from the wall, and it’s 8 x 12. 15 degrees or so.
I’m from Michigan, and almost made one Lions board… my son was born in Green Bay though, and his wife near Milwaukee. They live now in Hartland, so the colors work well here
Regarding the sawdust buildup under the sled… I was thinking about maybe lifting it up to ride on an array of ball plungers, to create a bit of air gap that hopefully the vacuum would suck out. How thick is the plastic on the bottom? Could it be tapped, or maybe just press fit plungers?
Have others seen this, or should I be looking for other causes? Maybe my z zero wasn’t really where I thought it was?
