3D butterfly on solid wood coaster
 

Attachment 4715
Here is a butterfly that I made for a coaster. It is about 3" in Dia. It has not been sanded. It was ran on a Mechmate machine.

Nice work Leo.

Time to try some 3D myself I think...

Jayson.

Leo,

Very nice. Now, try recessing the butterfly so that it is below the surface of the inner surface. I like the way you rounded the outer ring. If you change the stepover, you might be able to eleminate the lines that your 1/8 ball nose left on the inside of the wings. I had that problem when I did some grapes in corian.

Your machine is square. It is great when you don't have to sand.

Lets see more pictures.

Havn't done it myself, but apparently it helps a lot to get the tooling marks going in the grain direction - helps with the sanding.

...a little workshop note I have had success with in the past.
Before you make your final cutting pass, assuming you have a roughing tool and final finish tool, I do the following:

-rough the part with the 1st tool
-spray with a very "light" mist/layer of water to raise the grain of the wood.
-wait about 20 minutes
-parallel finish cut with at least 60% step over

Depending on your humidity, raising the grain helps the fibers to be cut stand up. Thus, when you cut the final pass, the wood will sometimes "shrink" a little bit and give a little tighter grain that needs "less" sanding.

Good luck.

Sean

* this worked well with Conifers (like redwood, cedar, soft pine) Maple and Ash not so much :)

Lion
 

Attachment 4724 This one was cut from pine using a .042" end mill