Custom Maple Maltese Cross
Let’s made a custom Maple maltese cross using our CNC router to carve out not only the overall shape from a slab of wood but also a “to be filled” resin area all around it.
If this looks familiar, it’s because it’s another version of another project we did recently where the inside was carved out completely… here’s the video of that custom Maple maltese cross.
I’ve honestly lost track of just how many thousands of projects I’ve completed at CNCROi.com using my full sheet CNC router over the years, it’s such a versatile tool that excels amazingly in wood and plastic projects.
For this custom Maple maltese cross, CNCROi.com was using a 24″ or 2ft square piece of Maple that’s roughly 1.7″ thick… not a problem for our powerful CNC router.
As with all the other jobs at CNCROi.com, the inside parts are dealt with before cutting the entire custom Maple maltese cross out.
The first part of carving out the inside margin of this custom Maple maltese cross is a roughly half inch thick and deep ditch all around, the customer will be filling this with resin so that this pops out a lot more with amazing color.
When it comes to Maple, there are endless applications for this wood species when it comes to everyday use, from charcuterie boards to solid cottage signage.
As with the previous similar project CNCROi.com completed, hold-down is always an issue when it comes to completing a project that requires almost all of it cut out from said material, so we used the same combination of glues, vacuum and hard/soft methods including screwing the custom Maple maltese cross to the table.
Unlike Pine, Maple is a hardwood species, that poses no issue for our machinery, lasers or routers, when it comes to customizing what we can make using our router or laser at CNCROi.com.
Taking a look at the chips, they are the perfect size, not small like a fine dust (moving too slow) nor is the router struggling to get through the material, which would mean I’m moving too fast using my full sheet CNC router at CNCROi.com.
There are lots of wood chips around the project, that’s because the dust food had to be raised a lot as I was cutting the overall custom Maple maltese cross very deep out of the wood and I was laze to pause the machine to adjust the dust foot.
Maple looks great when it comes to custom corporate awards, it’s a very enjoyable material to work with.
You’ll see that I used a upcut bit for this job, it’s faster to cut with and it removes the material which is very important when it comes to doing multiple passes that are progressively deep into the solid Maple.
When it comes to carving wood, softwood or hardwood, makes no difference other than the possibilities of cutting softwoods faster though they are more prone to ripping and breaking apart as the bonds within the wood itself that keep it together aren’t as strong.
During the CNC routing process, there are three levels of forces applied to the Maple, not only is the router bit itself pulling this job UP as it’s an up-cut bit, the wood is also being pushed and pulled in all other directions, hence the pieces of plywood on all four sides plus glue to make this as minimal as possible, the vacuum then just pulls the custom Maple maltese cross downwards into the table, same as the screws in all four corners.
Hold-down is a very important thing for routing, as this is a full contact method of carving and cutting, unlike CNCROi.com‘s CNC laser or to a lesser extent, plasma or waterjet.
CNCROi.com also does lots of live edge work using Maple, from kitchen counters to coffee tables.
If it wasn’t for the vacuum system sucking out all the chips, the entire table would have been flooded with chips, this becomes both a fire hazard and a lung issue because all the dust, especially the fine stuff, gets sucked-up… it isn’t the chips you see that cause problems, it’s the ones that you don’t that cause issues.
The reason for doing this custom Maple maltese cross in multiple passes was to make sure chip extraction was easily done and more importantly, the forces applied to the wood weren’t extreme enough to grab and shoot this big piece of wood across the shop.
Now that this custom Maple maltese cross is finished, as far as CNC routing is involved, the next step is cleaning this up… the customer is also a woodworker so it isn’t needed to be done but I like to ship out something cleaned-up as nobody likes sanding.
In the image below, you can see both the cut-out and the ditch going all around the custom Maple maltese cross that CNCROi.com just cut out.
A unique application you don’t see to much of are stamps made out of wood, Maple in this case.
You can see that material utilization was perfect, and why each of the hold-down systems employed failed one after the other during the overall production of this project.
The nice thing about wood is that things are easily cleaned-up using sanders and sanding paper.
With just a little elbow grease, you can see how quickly this custom Maple maltese cross transformed into something looking ragged into pristine, that’s what I love doing at CNCROi.com, turning jobs that customers imagine into reality… transforming pixels into saw dust.
Need something made? Contact CNCROi.com right now!