When we opened our Etsy shop a year ago I offered a Superman style trivet and the option to have it customized with the letter of your choice. I had made one with the S for my son because he likes to cook and I thought it would be cool. Turned out the very first order we got was for a customized trivet with a 'C' instead of the S. The finish is straight mineral oil and the notches are to allow air in/out since these are trivets for hot pans.

This is the 'C' we did -

This is the original -

Nobody has asked for one since that first order but all of a sudden this week we've gotten two custom orders. The first one was for a set of 7 trivets with B1-B7. Doing one letter is easy because I can fully support it around the perimeter but doing two meant thinking through the support to keep the numbers from breaking off or chipping while cutting so I added a cross-grain triangular piece on the back side.

These are the B1-B7 trivets -

And the back side with the cross-grain piece -

The next order came in the day I finished the Walnut set and this one is Maple with cherries. I had to make sure the stem of the cherries was thick enough not to break off during cutting but not be so thick that it looked odd.

I'm working on a video of the cutting and should complete that soon. What's neat about that is I used the CNC to cut all the way through the 3/4" material in one pass. In addition to the table saw, planer, drum sander, bandsaw for resawing and other tools in the shop there are 11 different steps in cutting these on the CNC with a lot of bit changes so it wasn't really a simple 'push the button and wait' sort of project.

 

Enjoy!
David

All are very nice David. I really like the creative solution you incorporated in the B1-B7 versions. Those are cool. Wonder what the significance is for the numbering?

 

Looking forward to seeing the video. Thanks for sharing your talent & creativity here with us too.

Thanks, Dave!  The guy who ordered them said his wife has 6 sisters and all names start with 'B'.  Their dad nicknamed them B1 through B7 according to birth years.  I guess it worked for them.

 

David

2 minutes ago, difalkner said:

Their dad nicknamed them B1 through B7 according to birth years.  I guess it worked for them.

Now that's funny but a cool heritage and story for them to forever share.

Here is the video for making these trivets -

 

 

David

Pretty neat.   Thanks.   Don't want to ask if you ever got the vac in the way of the cutter...

Thanks!  I'd love to tell you I've never had the two touch but if you look at the end of the nozzle you'll see that would be a hard sale...

 

Davd

Coming from a manufacturing background where dozens of NC & CNC specialty machining centers were used, I shouldn't really be amazed watching the video.

 

However, I was amazed and entranced just the same. I didn't realize the machine would re-zero itself after tool changeover. Do you need to use any type of tool setting jig ensuring the bit settings in the collet is consistent? How many collets do you maintain?

 

While not steel or aluminum, I too was amazed at the bit/collet temperatures since obviously no coolant fluid is used. Your description of 125 in/min as slow(er) seemed to be a pretty quick feed-rate to me particularly in walnut. I can't imagine it going faster. But hey, the only thing I can compare to is shoving a router by hand or the material across a bit in a table setting and I'm no where that fast at least where you could recognize anything after.

 

As always, well done video David. I truly appreciate your sharing your work, talents and learning aids on TPW. Thoroughly enjoyed watching this one.

Thanks, Dave!!  To be clear, I don't have an ATC (Automatic Tool Changer) so the bit changes are manual and I have to set zero each time.  Bit and collet changes take about 30 seconds and setting zero takes another 30 seconds so the time for bit changes is low.

 

I have cut Walnut at 200 ipm a few times but usually cut at 175 ipm.  These trivets represent such a small area that going much faster than 125 ipm is pointless and actually causes the CNC to jerk around quite a bit with the higher speeds and I don't think it cuts any faster.  It is typically cutting less than 2" before picking up and getting a new bite so it may not even be reaching 125 ipm even though Mach4 is reporting back to me that it does hit that occasionally.  Now on the perimeter cuts and full depth clean-up cuts it definitely reaches 125 ipm.

 

And I am in agreement on the speed vs. me trying to do it by hand - it seems awfully fast relative to how I use my plunge router and router table.  I just don't get anywhere near that speed when I cut by hand.

 

David

Thanks David...I love watching and learning more about the CNC approach to WW'ing. Probably will never own one at this stage nor can not currently justify ownership but enjoy trying to keep up with what's changing in this arena. So many advantages over traditional methods for jigs as well as replicating items for resale.