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I am interested in making door panels for an exterior door with decorative molding milled into the solid wood. I can’t run the stock on my router table, cut to the angles and pin them in… the great outdoors would make quick work of it to be sure.
It appears this is more than possible with the machine… but I am new to the idea of using CNC, and am curious if anyone has any results they could share.
I would love to buy the machine, it’d be worth it as an investment to be able to do this sort of work for my home and for customers. Below are some visual examples. If you have a project of yours that is similar or can offer words of encouragement or testimony I’d appreciate it! I have my reservations about computer aided woodworking, meaning only that I don’t know if I could hack it… so some success stories from similarly “low-tech” woodworkers who figured out the design side of it would be welcome too Thanks!
If you get the 1000mm version, you’ll be able to do this, you may however have to section your work off into smaller parts and devise a jig, or set of stops to position the door / panel for each section. That’s really just so you can work the full length of the door / panel…
You’re biggest issue will be time. The carve in the second image wouldn’t take too long, however, the large pockets in the first image would be rather time consuming to mill out of a solid piece… You would be better off finding, or making a forming tool for a router, and running strips of would on it on one side, then cutting to fit the pattern and using finish nails, glue, screw & plugs or something to affix them to the door. Would make for faster production.
There was a guy on the forum that put longer rails on his, you could do something like that. Then set your design to fit within the working area so you don’t have to move the work piece incase things didn’t line up. Fusion 360 would work the the carve. Like others said, the first one would take quite some time but that’s the beauty of cnc, it will keep going without you. I’ve setup a webcam on mine so I can remotely watch it so I don’t have to baby sit. Just need to rig up a remote kill switch incase something goes wrong and I am working off site that day.
This kind of work is usually done by nailing/glueing pre-shaped profiles on a flat surface/pocket rather than milling the whole thing out.
It is possible, yes, but EXTREMELY time consuming and not cost-effective at all considering the alternative…
Second photo is perfectly within the capabilities of the machine, keeping work area in mind off course
Yeah i agree the bottom pic. Should be simple. The top pic. You might want to just cut the molding out of other stock and then glue and pin it to the door after it is cut. With some good lay out planing it should be easy.
The top pic on an actually door would take about 100 hours or worse to cut out on an x-carve. The sheer size of a door would mean having your tiling down perfect and a large enough area being in the range of over 36" for the narrowest door it wont fit in the 1000 x 1000 stock unit, mounting it over the workpiece you would need extra long bits and possibly a modified X Axis. This type of work would be more suited for a home built unit with a full size 3hp router.
You’d be doing a ton of stock removal, so you’ll want to do at least a 2 stage cut, if not 3.
You’ll need to use at least 2 bits - rough and flat bottom and ball to get the profile.
The inside corners will only be as sharp as the size of the ball.
Yes, it will take a long time. I’d want to be really good at the various machining processes before attempting something on this expensive piece of stock.
Thanks!
