How To Flatten/Surface CNC Projects and Slabs BEFORE Carving, CNC Router Surfacing

IDC woodcraft.com I'm Garrett with IDC Woodcraft and I'd like to welcome you to this rather important CNC router video where you're going to learn something that you need to be knowing about when you're carving those amazing CNC projects on your CNC router what we're going to cover in this video is how to prepare your project piece just before you start the carve and what I mean is after you get your project piece set on your router you need to surface it first this is one of the reasons we have to have a surfacing bit in our arsenal of router bits now here's the reason why you need to do this and watch this video and understand why I'm shooting this video for you is many pieces of lumber are warped or they're Twisted they're cupped whatever even the milled Lumber that you get from the big box stores even though it looks nice and clean all the way down we'll expand and contract and because the Grain and lumber varies it expands and contracts differently so you need to get that milled down or surfaced if you don't it'll show up in your carbon and it doesn't take much for a deviation in your board to show up in a carve when you haven't surfaced it so what I'm going to do in this video is I'm going to teach you exactly how you should be setting you and how to setting your project piece up in your design software to surface it because there are things that you have to take into account with surfacing bits that you don't have to take into account with other router bits so we're going to get to the design software and then we're going to bring this project piece over to the long mil CNC router and I'm going to set it up so you know exactly how to set it up for you now along the way you are going to be learning a lot of tips and tricks that most YouTubers don't teach you along the way when they're showing you stuff like this we're going to work in the G Center Software wear and I'm going to show you a couple things there and then the design software I'll teach you a couple little extra tricks there as well while we're doing this so you definitely want to hang on throughout this video now a couple pointers just before we get started what I'm going to show you is in the vectric vcar pro software but the same principle is used in all design software so I want you to follow along regardless of what design software to use and regardless of what CNC router you use so the first thing I'm going to do right now is explain the process the thinking process that we have to go into with this whole thing and then we'll get into the technicals I'll walk you through step by step so let's get going so what we're going to work on is this piece of Oak here which is the end piece of a set of stairs I was helping my brother build a couple years ago and we have a seam here where we glued two pieces together so it's uneven here and of course you can see this is very rough on the back side and it's been planed on the front side I've got some score Marks here from the end of the planer so this is the piece that we're going to be working on and of course because I've got a knot here and it's clean on this side this will be the front which means that we have to surface this side first so we can set it down flat and then surface this side and go on with whatever we're going to carve into it so when I set this down on this side since that would be the first surface I'm checking to see if there's any wobble in it and I've got a little wobble back and forth this way not a whole lot but when we start to think about our carve we have to take into account one of the most important things when it comes to surfacing these are surfacing bits these are the IDC Woodcraft Ultra smooth cutting surfacing bits I've redesigned these from your traditional three flute surfacing bit and added a fourth and then had the grinds fixed so you get a much much smoother finish and a much faster feed rate but if you notice on surfacing bits we have cutting edges from the outside to here meaning there's no cutting edges here and that is really important for us to think about the reason that's important to take into account and the technique that we're going to be using is because we can't come down into the project like we normally do with any other router but we can't come down and plunge into it because there's no cutting surface here it'll come down smash against the wood and it'll just Turn and Burn it'll burn out wood really really fast so we have to create a box that is actually larger than this piece of wood and we have to take into account the diameter of the surfacing bits so the reason we have to create this box around it is because we have to allow for the space of the bit to come down to the side of the project just like this outside the edge of the project and then start to move into the project to make its cut you never want a surfacing bit to come down on a direct plunge into your project if you can't come down to the side which is what you should always do then you need to go with a very long ramp down into it so you never touch this area as it's making this carve so in this case we have a board that is a little over 10 inches wide by eight inches tall so we have to create our project piece in the software at 10 wide by eight tall but then we have to take into account the diameter surfacing bit on both sides now we don't necessarily have to do it on the top and the bottom it depends on the direction of our cut so the first thing that we have to think about is the direction of our cut we want to cut always along the grain so what we have to do is we have to let this bit come down to the outside like I explained come all the way across all the way off the wood then it'll move over and come back all the way across all the way off the wood come up and do the same thing all the way through the surfacing so we have to take into account the width of the bit or the diameter of the bit on both sides of the project so we have 10 inches wide plus we have a one and a half inch in this Ultra smooth cutting surfacing bit so we have to add at least one and a half inches on this side so it makes it 11.5 inches another one and a half on that side which makes 13 inches and then we want to just give it some extra space so we're going to add another half inch so when we create a rectangle it has to be 14 inches wide and this is eight tall so I'll just make it nine tall and the reason I'm just going to go nine tall is because I need to come off this Edge but I want it to start cutting here so it's going to just cut along like that when it first makes its start we want it to cut in there we don't need it to be over here cutting air on the first pass we're going to come down and we're going to come in and it's just going to be missing a little bit here and you'll understand that as we move into this so to re-explain this thought process before we actually get into the design software is we have the size of our stock we have to take into account the surfacing bit which needs to come in to the side of the material before it starts coming across and it needs to run off the material come back up and then start again all the way off the material so we have a one and a half inch Ultra smooth cutting surfacing bit which if you want to try this out it leaves your surface baby bottom smooth you can get that at the IDC Woodcraft store I'll link all three of them down below one of the things I had the 1 8 shank Ultra smooth cutting surfacing bit too it's literally the only 1 8 shank bit that exists nobody makes it because it's a little pricey to have made IDC would craft you don't have you can get that there but so we have to add the diameter of this to the project on both sides 10 inches wide plus one and a half on this side plus one and a half on this side plus a little extra to make sure that it comes in a little extra off the edge and then it'll come in so we're going to make it basically two inches on this side two inches on this side so we're gonna go 14 inches wide and we have eight inches tall we're just going to add at half an inch to each side that way the bit will come in it'll just start as cut just where we want it to start and it'll start cutting on the first pass all right so let's get into the vectric software and I'm going to show you how to design this up it's very quick very simple very easy let's go we're now in our design software I am specifically using vcarve Pro now I want to remind you you can do this in any software the principle is the same so if you use carveco or carbide create or whatever the principles all work just the same what we need to do is come to Startup tools and click create file a new file select that and remember our project piece is 10 inches wide by eight inches tall so those are the two numbers we need to punch in here so the grain Direction on the project is left to right and that's the 10 inch the 10 inch length so that's what needs to be in our width and our height is eight inches up and down the thickness is irrelevant since we're just doing a surfacing project and then we want to make sure we're going off the material surface you can see where it says zero position we got the little red bead there on the top of the block if I select uh material bed or machine bed you can see the little bead goes to the bottom we want material surface we want that bead at the top so we're going to switch that and then our zero reference point is going to be the lower left corner this is the start point of the project and with that we are ready to go we're going to click OK and in this screen you see a white area this is the what it's going to look like in the vector software and that is the size of the piece of Oak that we are going to be doing now we need to create a area that the surfacing bit is going to work in and you remember I told you before we have to take into account not just the width of the material but we also have to take into the width into account the width of the tool and then some so we need to create a rectangle around this that's going to capture that two inches on the left side and two inches on the right side of the project now if your grain was going up and down you would need to capture the two inches on the bottom and the two inches on the top and then we'll have the half inch on the left and the right in this case we have two inches on the left two inches on the right half inch on the bottom extra and half inch on the top extra and we'll create that when we create a rectangle so in the vectric software you want to come under create vectors to the third icon at the top says draw a rectangle select that and we're going to ignore all these little buttons around here we do want to make sure that it is checked on square and not on rounded external or rounded internal and then we're going to type in the size of our rectangle so we have 14 wide we have 10 inches plus the one and a half inch on the left one and a half inch on the right plus we're going to add a half inch on each side that's 14 inches that's what we have the project is eight inches tall we're going to add a half inch to the top and a half inch to the bottom and that's the 9 inches so we're ready to go we click create and close and you can see in the drawing area now we have a rectangle what we have to do now is simply Center the rectangle relative to the project piece so we're going to select the rectangle what I did was held my left Mouse button down anywhere to the right of the project or right of a line and I'll hold the left Mouse button down and just come across and make sure I cross over that line and let go and now it has selected a rectangle if you don't use a mouse you are making life very difficult now when I am saying get a mouse if you are not a mouse user I am absolutely serious about this you are killing yourself in your design software if you're not using one of these you're playing with that little scroll bar at the bottom of the the screen and the side of the screen to try to get your project moved around just right you're not really sure how to zoom in in and out it is so easy with a mouse I mean design software is built to be using this how if you don't know how I'm moving that screen around I'm literally just holding this mouse button down right here and then I just move the mouse around and it moves the screen around that's how simple it is when I'm zooming in and zooming out I'm using the scroll wheel right it's so simple so if you're not a mouse user I'm going to say do yourself a favor right now like literally stop the video go down in the description of this video and I will link this specific Mouse it's one I like it's not expensive it's like 20 25 I think from Logitech so one I prefer it's a very well known brand and they work really well if you don't believe me then if you are a mouse user put down in the comments tell them why I am saying get a mouse I mean please prove to those non-mouse users why this is so important and just makes your life so much easier so please if you don't use a mouse you are making your life very difficult with your design software design software is built with this in mind down in the description click the link get it right now stop the video and you will thank me later all right let's get back to this okay so we're going to Center up this rectangle now you want to come over to the area called transform objects and select the last icon it looks like a Target it says align selected objects select that button and go to the three icons or three buttons at the top and you're going to click the center button now when I do that if you watch the rectangle out in the screen out in the drawing area you're going to see it's going to move its position and it's going to be centered over the project piece so I'm going to click that button now and then close that and simply click anywhere in this drawing area and we have deselected a rectangle and you can see now the rectangle is centered over the project and we are literally done with this part of preparing to surface our project piece so now we have to create a tool path for it but before I do that I want to give you another perspective of what we're doing so I'm going to draw a circle which is going to represent the one and a half inch surfacing bit so I click draw a circle make sure I'm set on diameter and then I'm going to set my diameter to 1.5 and I'm simply going to come out here and click once and now we have created a one and a half inch circle and I'm going to close that and I'm going to just hover over any part of that Circle while it's highlighted and click it again you see these beads come up this way I can now grab that Circle and move it around by moving my cursor over the center button in the middle of the circle you can see my cursor changes into a little Target that means it has grabbed onto that now all I have to do is hold down my left Mouse button and just drag that circle around so what's going to happen I'm going to scroll out just a little bit more so I'm going to see this whole area is the the software is going to start somewhere inside this box and it'll start at one of the corners and the router bit which is what this circle is representing is going to start at the corner and it's going to plunge down to the cut depth and then it's going to start moving across into the cut but you can see right here that the router bit is not going to plunge into the material we want every bit of that router bit motion to only be side to side so come all the way across it'll come all the way to the edge of that box then it will move up a certain amount and come all the way across again and it'll keep zigzagging in that fashion and you'll see that in just a moment so I let that go and I'm hitting the delete button to get rid of the circle because I don't need it now we're going to go generate the tool path up in the top of the drawing area there's a little blue arrow that points to the right side of the screen now when you hover over it says switch to Tool path and so we're going to select that and we switch over to the tool path area which is all the icons over to the right now we're noon we're going to create what's called a pocketing tool path and what a pocket tool path does is it cuts out anything inside of a selected what they call closed vector and a closed Vector is anything where you can start any at any point on a vector and start tracing your finger around it and there literally is no end for example we can see on this rectangle here if I start right in this area and I move my cursor around and around there is no end point it just keeps going around that means it's closed just like a circle and that's what we want so now we're going to select the rectangle by hovering over it with our Mouse and clicking once so it's selected and then over in tool path operations we are going to select the pocketing tool path whatever software you have that should all say pocket tool path or pocketing something to that effect the vectric software it is the second icon in the top row from the left and when you hover over it it says pocket tool path we're going to select that and we have to set our depth now when we are carving the surface when we're just surfacing we only want to take off a little bit at a time but we're always going to start at the top of the surface in this case our start point is going to be zero that's the top of the surface and we're only going to take off a thin amount we're going to take off .05 the next thing is the white box here where it says tools now you may have some tools in there maybe a quarter inch or a drill or something like that you need to get rid of that first and the way you do that is by selecting the tool and coming down and clicking the remove button and that will eliminate that tool and you want to get rid of all the tools that are in there and so just keep clicking them and click keep clicking remove now we need to bring in the surfacing bit so we're going to click the select button and that's going to bring up your tool path uh your your tool database now what we're going to be drawing from is the IDC Woodcraft database and if you do not have this I suggest you go to idcwoodcraft.com where you can download it for free and you can see the entire list of router bits that is in that database all those are already preset for you and you may also want to get the IDC Woodcraft CNC Rider Bit app it's a beautiful quick reference to have right on your cell phone so what we're going to do is find the surfacing bits or the surfacing end mills which is really what they they're classified as and we're going to find the one and a half inch surfacing bit so this is the one and a half inch Ultra smooth cutting surfacing bit we will not change any numbers here these are default numbers that are populated we're simply going to come down to the lower right of the of the window and click select and you can see now under the tools the surfacing bit one and a half inch surfacing End Mill is now selected now we're going to check our settings on that by coming down to the edit button so we're going to highlight that by clicking on it and click edit and I just want to check my feeds since we are only taking off a very thin amount of 0.05 we want to bring our feed rate up so we're going to bring it up to 150 inches per minute and we want to make sure we're at 80 to 90 percent step over which we are at 90 percent here the plunge rate is eight inches per minute which is I always set plunge rates for surfacing bits low so I can stop them in case they're coming down on top of the material so all our new settings are there I'm going to click OK that is set properly the next thing you want to do is make sure that you are set on raster now why raster what is raster relative to offset because we are carving back and forth along with the grain we need to make sure that we are telling the software that it is going to be telling the tool to go along with the grain and you can see right now we are selected an offset and we've got in this little box here like a spiral type of look and what that's going to do is create a spiraling tool path from the center of the material in other words it's going to bring the bit right down into the middle of the material but it's also going to plunge a bit over the material we don't want that we want well at the same time it's also going to create this type of tool path and it's going to create witness marks because it's going across the grain at some points witness marks are just tool marks we want to go raster so we're going to select raster and now you see that the box has changed to kind of a zigzag pattern and it starts at the bottom and goes up a little bit comes back across goes up a little bit goes back across back and forth like that that's exactly what we want now I want you to keep in mind if your grain is up and down you need to change the raster angle of the raster right now it is side to side and because it is at zero where it says raster angle it says zero that means it is going to be going left and right if you if your grain is up and down then you need to change that to 90 degrees but we're good where we're at so we are simply going to come down and give this tool path a name and we're going to call it surface wood simple tool path name but that's what we want I'm also going to put in su-15 the su-15 is the skew number or the stock keeping unit number of the ultra smooth cutting surfacing bit the one and a half inch that we're going to be using on this project and okay so we clicked calculate and now you see we have that zigzag pattern that we wanted now I'm going to show you the difference we're going to double click the tool path I'm going to switch it to offset and then I'm going to scroll down and calculate and now you see the type of moves that the router bit is going to be making it's going to be making the squares kind of it's actually type a spiral type of move and we don't want that so we're going to double click that go back to a raster and recalculate and there we go now all we have to do is save the tool path we are ready to go so we're going to click close and come up to the little save button which is right where I'm showing you it's like a little floppy disk looking thing click that and we want to make sure that one tool path is selected with the little check box which it is right now and we want to make sure that your post processor is set appropriately we use the Long Mill MK2 CNC router that uses the grbl inch post processor if you're in millimeters then you want to use the grbl millimeters post processor so we're good to go I'm going to select save tool path click that and then I'm going to give it a name which the name is already in there it says surface wood su-15 that is the name of the tool path we're going to click save I'm going to open up the directory to that directory I saved it to my downloads folder and there is the g code right there so now we can go on and set the project up on the machine okay now you know how to set this up now this has taken a little bit a while and I gotta hand it to you for hanging around but trust me once you get the hang of this you'll have this knocked out in about five minutes to get in this design taken care of the next thing we have to do is actually set our project up on the CNC router so we're going to set it up on the long mil MK2 CNC router Long Mill is the brand that I recommend for you if you're getting into this because it's very reasonably priced machine and it's a very rugged machine for benchtop machine and if you want to check it out I've got a good Deep dive review video on it I'll put a link for that down below also I want you to remember if you're not a mouse user get a mouse there's a link down below if you have not stop the video already and cut your mouse you really need to get it your life will be much better and so we have set up for the one and a half inch Ultra smooth surfacing bit just so you know at IDC Woodcraft there are three different surfacing bits that I carry in the ultra smooth series we've got the one inch which is the most common and then the one and a half inch it goes a lot faster because there's a lot more surface area that is taken care of and if you have something like a 3018 CNC router the small desktop machines you will not find a 1 8 inch surfacing bit out there from anybody but from IDC Woodcraft so we've got that in the ultra smooth series as well so there'll be a link down below for that and of course get the app for your phone and we are talking about router bits and feeds and speeds that uh I'd obviously woodcraft.com on the website there's a banner at the top of the website where you get your database downloads I got it for the vectric software I've got it for Fusion car bed create and we have it for carve coat so that link will be down there as well they're just good idcwoodcraft.com okay we're going to move into the setup aspect of this project and then we'll do the surfacing I'll walk you through how to set that up because all this is all part of the steps in the process do it a few times like I said you will have this down now before we surfaced our piece of project material or raw piece of course we've got to hold it down on the table and because the surfacing bit is going to be covering the entire area we can't have clamps holding the project down so we're going to use a technique called the CA glue hold down method a technique that if you haven't heard of you're going to enjoy learning about another way to hold your project pieces onto your CNC router CA glue is cyanoacrylic I think something like that it basically is super glue and it works beautifully for doing this type of work and you'll find that you will use it most of the time so I use a brand called starbond which is pretty much the industry standard for CNC routers and I have a discount code if you want to use that discount code you'll get 10 off I believe down in the description is the discount code for that now what you need they have while using this is you need the glue and you want the accelerator spray what that does is it sets the glue really fast and you want to use painters tape and a little scraper to press the painters tape down so we're going to set this up really quick now what the other thing is is we have to have a clean work surface because we're putting tape down here so you'll know you'll understand this in a moment so I'm just going to dust it up or dust It Off right quickly and then we're going to take our glue this is going to be the first surface that's going to be held down because we're Milling this surface this is the ugly bad surface you can see we've got these holes from the knot there and by the way CA glue is good to recover knots like this so I got a video about that if I can find it I'll post it down below to show you how you can use projects or material that has holes and cracks in it using CA glue as a filler it's an awesome way to salvage pieces of wood that may have holes in it okay so this is going to be the first surface we're going to surface this will be the bottom we're going to use the one and a half inch Ultra smooth cutting surfacing bit that means that this is the downside and so we're going to have to put our tape down on the project piece and here and on on a piece like this we only need two strips now before we do that we're just going to check how this is sitting just a little bit of a rock here that's not going to be an issue but if there's an issue where you have a lot of rock then you'll probably have to put a shim in there just to hold it up but I would still follow exactly what I'm doing right now now you see on my spoil board I've designed this for the Long Mill and if you have a Long Mill on Etsy is a whole design file for you with the G-Code so you can make the spoil board it's got the circles in it it's got the Grid in it it's got a grid along there and right there it's got a QR code so if you need to get bits you can just scan that right there and that'll take you to the IDC Woodcraft website okay so we're going to put down some painters tape and I will put it down right here and I'm following along the grid line right here let's turn the camera down a little bit um we're generally falling along the grid line and I'm just going to put a piece down make sure it is wider than the project piece just like that and I'll take my scraper and I'll just run it down rub it out and then I've got that set up and then I just need to see where I need to put this piece which is going to be along this grid line right here so we'll put some more tape down and I'm using a lot of extra tape but painters cheap the tape is cheap that's down and then we'll do it on this piece as well painters tape there and painters tape here and there we go let's just get rid of a little bit of extra there and so here's what we do [Music] we're going to use the accelerator spray and the glue itself what I'll do is I'll take the glue now remember it's super glue so you don't want to get it on your fingers and I'm just going to run a bead along like that and a bead along like that foreign a stringy bead [Music] and then we'll take the accelerator spray I always want to make sure this is capped right away because the accelerator spray will get in the air and we're going to spray the accelerator on here now I don't want to spray it over that sort of spray it over here and just want you to see [Music] just like that and just like that and I'll simply just line this thing up and run it down just like that then I hold it for I will say about five seconds and this is all set we are set that's how fast that clamping method works you will use this a ton so I suggest you get the thin starbond CA glue and the accelerator spray again I'll put a link Down Below in the description with my discount code from IBC Woodcraft that'll give you 10 off the next thing we're going to do is actually put our surfacing bit in the router and set our X Y zero position but you're going to learn something really really important at this point of this and that's about how far up you should grab on the shank of any kind of wide body router bit for example we have the bull bit here the IDC Woodcraft bull bit right it's a wide body bit you got the big balls one inch the one inch radius bit they call it the Big Balls Bowl uh radius bit that's a wide body bit or the 150 degree V bit if you want to make something like a pizza peel all right this is the ideal tool to cut the taper on the pizza peel so that right there and I actually did a video that walks you through that I'll put a link down below for the video for that but how to Chuck up on bits is really important I see way too many people when they're chucking up on their bits they're holding them way up like that so what I see way too often is people will take their bit and they'll just put it up just about like that and you have so much shaft hanging out and if there's any stress like unusual stress that goes against the bit like you run into a knot suddenly or a nail or something like that that can actually you have so much shaft there that it can bend and then you'll have this big bent bit swinging around shaking the hell out of your machine and you have a bullet that's ready to fly out of there now I can't begin to tell you how dangerous it is to only hold a little bit of your shaft a lot of people will try and get the reach out of the bit by doing that this is extremely dangerous it can wreck your machine and if that shaft happens to break and that piece is flying out of there when the machine is turning at twenty thousand RPMs that chunk of metal can fly right at you and it can do some serious damage so whenever you're chucking up on a bit a wide body bit like this or like this you always want to be about two-thirds of the shaft at the very Max halfway up the shaft ideally if you can get all the way up that's what you'd want to do and that's exactly what we're going to do here but another tip that I want to make sure that you understand is anytime you change a bit you want to clean out your collet first of any sawdust from the previous cut so we're going to look at this and there is some sawdust in there not too much and we have some sawdust in there saltus acts like a lubricant in there and your router bit will slip over time and that will ruin a project because the router bit will be slipping down further and further as you're getting into your carve so we're going to clean this out and sometimes if there's too much in there I've got a little toothbrush that'll go in and clean that up with and then we will just want to run our finger up in there see if there's anything up there and we're looking good so we're gonna bring that back in [Music] run that up and I'm going to run this surfacing bit all the way up until it stops and that's how you should put in these wide body bits now I do want to take a minute to talk to you about the ultra smooth cutting bits real quick the surfacing bits you probably have a three flute bit at home like this and these are pretty traditional pretty standard but they're they're not the best bits out there I mean I used to actually sell a similar style to this and I wasn't very happy with the results so I went to my tooling company and we designed up a whole new style a bit first of all the very obvious thing is we have four flutes on there and also we've modified that angle right here and the angle underneath at the bottom of the cutting blade so that you can run this faster and you can get take a beefier cut if you want to but most importantly it leaves a much much better finish and that's why I had the ultra smooth cutting surfacing bits designed so if you are interested in checking that out I think you'll be pleasantly surprised they'll be linked down here and are available at idcwoodcraft.com of course you can't get them anywhere else they are unique to IDC Woodcraft because they are IDC Woodcraft designs I worked with that design now when we tighten this up we don't want to over tighten just enough where you feel it grab that shank and maybe just a little bit more and we are ready to go so that's how you should Chuck any one of these bits up especially when you get a lot more mass like this one here you Chuck up here you're asking for problems always Chuck about from there on down to there now we're gonna zero or X and Y and our Z and when it comes to this surfacing we do not have to be accurate at all we just want to generally find our X and our y intersecting points and then we'll use our touch probe to find our Z and then we'll start running this cycle over and over again until we get a good clean surface so all I'm going to do is I'm going to move the router over in the X Direction until the center of the shaft is eyeballed to this this cut line right there on the Y and then same width on the X line so let's go ahead and move that over okay we have moved it over and if I put the camera right on that line I bought it pretty well it's just a hair over that way just a tad and on the Y as well it is pretty much there that's all I need now we're going to use these the touch probe just to get our Z reference and we'll use this in we'll set it up in the G Center Software we are now in the G Center Software and I need to set the X and Y position to zero but first let's clean the program I'm going to come down to the lower in the visualizer area and load file I'll click that and there is the file I'm going to double click it and you can see that it is now showing the moves that the machine is going to take and now I need to zero my X and Y so simply hover over the X I click that once and you can see it went to zero hover over the zero y click it once and that goes to zero as well for the Z we're going to use the probe now traditionally when I am surfacing a rough board like this I like to try to find a high spot to zero my Z off of and then I'll progressively work my way down remember we're only taking a .05 off at a time so this actually runs really really quick remember we're using the one and a half inch surfacing bit at a 90 step over so that's five passes and it's done super quick at 150 inches per minute now it's the back side here that is high because just the I can feel it so what I'm going to do is move the probe back to here and this basically feeling it's this back corner over here that is the high side so we're going to move that over using the G sender software we'll just take it back and I will move it over to the generally over in that area and then with the probe I like to get about a quarter of an inch between the probe and the tool I am roughly three quarters of an inch so whenever you set your tool to get close to the probe never had the probe under the tool you just bring it down and then see if it sits in there you get about the space and I do and so I'm just going to set it there and and we're starting the probe cycle so now we are going to launch the probe okay so we just want to make sure we are set on Z and then come down and press the probe button when we press that this window pops up and then what we want to do is touch the probe to the tool and if it's connected properly with the magnet on the shaft and the piece underneath then the little blue button will show up and now all we have to do is press the button and now the router bit is being probed and the Z is set generally at this level our X and Y is still at this corner so with that I can go into G sender and we'll just do it this way rather than do screen recording and we'll go to X and Y so we can just press this button here it says go X and Y when I press that the machine moves over but first we want to get everything out of the way so we'll pull that over here and now I'll press the button foreign and we are ready to rock and roll all we have to do is turn on the CNC router and then hit the go so with this Ultra smooth series surfacing bits and the other style the most surfacing bits you only need to set this on like a one or a one and a half but with this it's designed you can go much much faster we are going to turn it at a three and we're going at a much faster feed rate so let's rock this out we're going to turn it on and go to town and you'll see how fast this is going to run so we power it up make sure we sit on three hit the start button and the router goes over here and now we're going at a very rapid rate and you see that it already missed a little bit over here it kicked a little bit of a chip out there it actually hit me just from just from the looseness there sorry I had my microphone right on my mouth foreign [Music] that fast we have just run our first surfacing cycle [Applause] and I'm going to move it back just by using the manual controls just to take a quick look at everything [Music] and it looks like we actually were able to surface everything most stuff we got a little bit of fur going on here and I think that's what the grain of the wood has a little bit of a step right there and of course we missed this corner so all we're going to do is come back in and probe right in the middle here just any part of the surface that was machined so I'm going to speed this part of the video up because you already know how to do it foreign foreign need to speed it up and I'm going to press the probe button we're going to touch the plate and it said good so I'm going to hit start it's going to cycle it again [Music] we're good to go and I'm simply going to restart the program and there it is that whole surface is done thank you we've surfaced 100 percent of it now you'll notice there's a bit of fur and this just happens to be I guess the way the grain is the way it's starting to turn so I'll just take my sander and sand it down real quick and then all we have to do at this point is take this off take the tape off put new tape on we're going to put tape on this side now we'll flip it over and then we'll surface the other side so I'll speed this whole part of the video up because it's just a repeat of what we've done here on this side [Music] thank you [Music] and now from this point I can go directly into my carve and I would simply just set up my router bit that would start to carve in here and use my probe and probe my X Y and Z zero but you can see we've got a beautiful piece of piece now of Oak and it is ready to go when I when you flip it over to do the second side all you have to do is just make sure it's straight to the way you want it and do the work that you want to do so what we've done in this video is what you always need to do to your CNC projects just before you carve them you want to get them secured to your CNC router whether it's a long Mill CNC router or some other machine and you want to surface one side at least one side if you're using the milled Lumber that you get at Home Depot or Lowe's or wherever all you need to do is one side but if you have twisted or warped boards or rough milled Lumber then you need to do both sides remember the CA glue method is the perfect method to use for doing this I have a link for the CA glue the star Bond brand which is the one I recommend with a discount code and that is listed down in the description also remember the ultra smooth surfacing bits if you're using a three flute bit the one inch you might want to consider the 1.5 because you see how fast that works and you know in the design software how to set this up you have to be wider in your project area than the project itself so the CNC router bit the surfacing bit comes down to the side of the project and then we'll come in and start making cut you do never ever want a surfacing bit to plunge into the material unless you're using a very long ramp because there are no cutting edges on the inside of the bottom of the bit so with that if this video was helpful give me a thumbs up and a comment down below maybe some other recommendations if you know something else or a big fat thank you for helping you out to understand how to do this IDC woodcraft.com

Channel: CNC Routers, Beginners & Beyond - Garrett Fromme

Views: 18,224

Keywords: cnc for beginners, cnc router, Garrett Fromme, vectrix, longwood cnc router, long wood cnc router, long board cnc, idcwoodcraft, idc woodcraft

Id: L-t8OVnyMhg

Length: 52min 7sec (3127 seconds)

Published: Wed May 03 2023