Frage What I have been doing in last few months.

I have done all kind of things with my SC840, but I have not posted any of the pictures here, so I decided it might be time to show what I have done. I have already posted most of these to the facebook group so if you read that you might have seen them before.

My first job was to make some 3d printed pieces so I can put my 3d printer spool in the provided holder. The spool I got from the local store was some kind of smartreel, which had 80mm hole on one side and 25mm hole on other side, so I needed some adjustment pieces...

After that I was able to do some 3d prints, and as the machine was still in my living room, I didn't want to start any milling jobs, so I got some random nice looking 3d design from the web and printed it.

I.e Formosan bear with moving hands, legs and head. The joints on the hands are quite delicate, and I needed to clean them up quite a lot to be able to get them to work, and now they do tend to fall off if you are not careful. Legs and head joints are working fine.

And by the way the printing time was almost 16 hours...

Next I wanted to do some useful things i.e., small markers we could use while playing roleplaying games on the map to mark different things. Small coin like things with numbers and letters. I first run test run on wood, and then milled one from aluminum. On the wooden ones the small texts are not really readable, as the wood breaks down but the aluminum one is quite nice.

Machine time for aluminum one was 12 minutes. The leveling and pocket for the top was done using 3mm 1-flute end mill, and it took about 6 minutes. The text was done using 90 degree V-bit in bit over 3 minutes, and the cutout was done with same 3mm end mill, and it took about 3 minutes.

Next work was present for my niece. It was the sign for her door, with interchangeable texts like Keep out, Knock first etc. The text pieces were held in place with super magnets and there is special tool to change them having stronger magnets. There is two magnets on the back of the base, and two magnets in each text piece.

The lesson I learned with this piece was that 28mm is bit too thick to be cut out with SC, as in that case you really need to take the bit out a lot. I didn't have the bit out enough, thus the collet nut started rubbing the wood, and then it got stuck and it lost some steps cutting sideways for few mm before I stopped it. Anyways that is barely visible on the piece.

Work time for this was 2.5 hours.

Next was similar horse themed door sign, this time I did add some color to the thing, i.e. first did the text on the piece, and then painted it in gold paint, and then milled 1mm away around the text, so it is only thing that has color.

Work time around an hour.

While making those signs, I realized that I need some thing to nicely hang them on the wall, so some aluminum plate or something with suitable hole would have been nice. After googling around for 15 minutes, I decided that it is easier to make one myself than to try to find some shop somewhere selling them. Two times two minutes later this was the result.

Then came one of my work trips to Yokohama, and I decided to make customized coins for IETF Codesprinters, with name written on the coin directly. 16 coins took about 2 hours, and there I noticed that the white baseboard of the SC is way too flexible for this kind of jobs. If I tighten the one end of the aluminum plate on place, the board flexed so much that end was 0.2 mm lower than other end, so I needed to go around and tighten all four corners one at the time, and use my spindle as reference to get the board level enough to be able to mill this kind of 0.1 mm details.

In the first picture you can see that I didn't get it completely level for the first run, and some coins are missing the edge leveling. Final results was quite nice anyways.

Then I started making Xmas presents. My first job was the leaf from the cut3d demo pieces. This was first time I used cut3d, and before this I had always used center point as reference when doing double sided things, but the cut3d had default on the corner, and I didn't think anything and just accepted that. Then when I was making my XY zero point, I noticed that my piece of wood is so big (X 600mm x Y 445mm) that I cannot go to the corner, so I just used point few mm off from the corner. I didn't realize that this will of course cause the other side to be milled few mm off also. If I had just used center point as I had done normally, then I just need to flip the piece over and keep the bars keeping it in place in same place and everything works.

So 12 hourse later when I was cutting the piece out I realize my mistake...

While trying to cut the leaf bowl out from the extra material the handle broke down, so I now the bowl is without handle. Anyways some cleanup with other tools it was still quite ok...

Then some other random Xmas presents. First small fridge magnet.

Name tag for Bass.

Some cutting boards with names.

And when you have hammer, all problems looks like nails, so when you are making Xmas card, you just print out picture, write some text with stepcraft using ball point pen attachment, cut it out using drag knife, and then it is done...

Then some bases for homemade mustard jars.

And then I made another present for my niece (goddaughter), and this time it was small box for holding things. Then I needed to make another fir her sister for her birthday present and finally one more for my other goddaughter, and then my third goddaughter saw it and she said she wants to get one too, so one more coming up at one point.

The first one had some design flaws, which I fixed on the 2nd one, and on the 3rd one I had some issues which my SC (loosing steps), but perhaps 4th one will be perfect... Actually the 2nd one was already quite perfect.

Each of those are about 4 hours on stepcraft, and consists of bit less than 20 different jobs with different bits. The base material is 40mm thick pine, and both bottom and the lid are done two sided, so that I first machine the one side, and then flip the piece over and do the other side next. In last two ones I have then left the cutting out of the piece to the table saw, instead of trying to do that on the SC. The first one I did 21 mm cut from one side and 20 mm cut from other side and it did cut it out, but the problem was that there was small offset (0.1mm or so) which I needed to sand away, and that took time on SC, doing it on table saw is much faster.

The first one is narrower, and has thinner walls, but the magnet holes got too close to the wall so it cut pieces out from there where it was not supposed to cut out. Both top and bottom have magnets so the lid stays in place quite nicely.

First pictures are from the 1st model, later ones are from the 2nd model.

And I got some Tungsten cubes from another kickstarter project and decided to make stand for them. Everything went fine, I even managed to make 45 degree ramps in reverse 3 sided pyramid using 90 deg V-bit, but then when I tested it I realized that my angles are incorrect. The pieces do not stay there, as the bottom angle is not 90 degree that would be suitable for cube, but larger. Oh, well need to redo this at one point.

Thats it for now.

Most likely I do not have too much time to work with my stepcraft for next month or two, but we will see.

very, very great works you have made!