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I made some decorations for my friends “Demented Disney” Halloween Party.
I got the images form a quick “Mickey Skull” image search and made up some large MDF decorations.
I used 1/4" MDF and a 1/8" down cut bit.
Everything was done as a profile cut, painted separately and glued together with wood glue.
I used a course sanding sponge to sand off the bottom of the carves. The MDF sands easily enough. But eventually I want to get a 1/8" compression bit and see if I can get good results with than.
I call them the “Micky Monsters” (misspelled on purpose )
My local home depot carries 2’x4’ 1/8" mdf sheets for ~$8 each. They fit nicely on my modified 2000mm x 1000mm XC.
I find that with the 1/8" down cut bit I don’t need much in the way of tabs. I have found that 2 are more than enough.
Here you can see how the layers stack up. Doing this as profile cut out of thinner material is so much faster than if I had done it as a pocket operation out if 1/2".
Yep. I found that the Rustolium x2 works well, I also had some old Rustolium Plastic Primer left over from another project.
They seem to be a bit thicker? Or go on heavier? I am not sure, but they don’t wick into the MDF as bad as the cheep $1 paint does.
Plus I got better at getting a heavy base coat on without getting drips. Multiple passes, heavy passes till the MDF just started to get “shiny”. A indication that I had enough paint in that spot to seal the MDF up. Once that base coat dried a final top coat of paint went on easily.
yeah I see what you mean I find it hard to sell painted mdf cutouts at an affordable price lol there is just alot of paint and time that goes into getting a nice finish thats for sure
Wow these are awesome! I love the style you are using with layered MDF. I’ve been considering that lately for various projects, but awesome to actually see it put to use here. I see a lot of folks with layers doing that method and figured I could do it easy enough with MDF. Any plans to post (or sell) those designs? That “Micky” one is absolutely sick!!! I love it!!! Great job and very inspiring!!!
Just wood glue. These are simple enough that lining things up is not difficult.
(For text I v-carve a outline of the letters in the base as a alignment guide.)
Yeah, I am thinking my upgraded machine might be able to handle it with 1/4" MDF.
And even not, in playing with my 1/4" compression bit I have noticed that it tends to clear the up cut “fuzzes” from the top on subsequent passes of the downcut portion of the bit. No ideal, but less sanding is less sanding
so i just bought this tool and I have cut about 3 full sheets of 1/4" mdf and seems to be doing great
now on my larger machine I have ran this tool up to 132ipm at .25" full depth but I would test out good settings for your x-carve but I give you those speeds to say that even though its a small tool its a rigid tool
I switched from a downcut to this compression and my processing time went way up and with this new tool and well the down cut as well I never use tabs on my parts in mdf
but I would ramp into the material I know easel does not let you do that but I am sure you use v-carve for your toolpaths I ramp in about 80% of my feedrate
#46139 do not buy the 1/8" shank tool imo its will be to weak
A cabinet maker of mine is getting me the name of a product he uses on MDF before he spray paints them. It is like Kilts but has shellacke in it and seals it very well for painting.
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