rosettes

Rob Davis · Post by **Rob Davis** » Wed, Aug 30 2006, 4:11PM

Before I go trying to reinvent how to make these on a Thermwood, has anyone successfully done this and how did you do it and what tooling did you use?
We are needing to make multiple quartered white oak 6x6 rosettes for a customer and I am thinking that it would be easier to do this on the router than with a cutter on a druill press plunge router.
Can you offer any tips or experience?

Jody Wilmes · Post by **Jody Wilmes** » Wed, Aug 30 2006, 4:44PM

Well, depending on how many you are talking about, you could get a series of conventional tooling making several profiled passes....or you could simply model them out with a ballnose tool, endmill tool, etc. It all depends on how many you have to make and what you're wanting to invest.
We actually had a custom tool created at one time that only required you to plunge/retract....but your rosettes sound too large in diameter for that.

By the way, we do have a few rosettes in the Rental library.

Bill Rutherford · Post by **Bill Rutherford** » Thu, Aug 31 2006, 5:38AM

Rob,
We cut a number of rosettes for one customer out of the files Jody is speaking about in the rental library. We took a long blank and screwed it down to the spoildboard parrallel to the edge of the bed.(make sure your screws land outside the finished parts) We then ran the rental program multiple times changing the X location each time. When the entire board was finished we took it to a table saw and cut to size. We could have done the cut to size on the router also, but this was a quicker way for us to get it done.

Rob Davis · Post by **Rob Davis** » Thu, Aug 31 2006, 9:06AM

Thanks for responding.... we have to make about 375 of them (restoration of a LARGE old building) We talked about writing a program (or renting TWood's), taking some S4S from our molders, cutting a \"slot\" in a sheet of MDF for the S4S to fit into, and making them 10' at a time, cutting apart after routing. Sounds more complicated than it really would be but just didn't know if there was a better way. I am concerned about machining marks in the rosettes since a ball cutter won't make convex arcs without lots of passes, this job is a very high end quality conscious customer, and I don't really want to hand sand all of them. I am going to cutom make a cutter from our molder stock, mount it in the head and manually plunge it into the boards also and see what happens. Think I'll start at about 5000RPM.
If it goes bad, send wooden rosettes to my funeral OK?

Jody Wilmes · Post by **Jody Wilmes** » Thu, Aug 31 2006, 9:17AM

5000 RPM sounds good. Naturally you want the cutter balanced for higher though. Depending on how deep you're plunging, you may be required to perform multiple depth plunges, which would save cutter life, increase safety, and help avoid part from flying off. It would also reduce heat build-up on the tool.

Rob Davis · Post by **Rob Davis** » Thu, Aug 31 2006, 12:34PM

Jody, we make knives every day for our molders and they are 6000 rpm balanced so I don't think balanced is a problem. We plan to try a \"peck & plunge\" type thing - cut and retract, cut and retract, etc and make this cut in about 5 pecks.
Who knows?

Zach Froble · Post by **Zach Froble** » Thu, Aug 31 2006, 2:08PM

Rob,

I have cut several rossettes on our machine. I see if I can get you some info on were I purchased my cutters and all my peck drilling feeds. Once you have the feeds set up correctly there is practically no sanding needed on the parts. We also machine all the rossettes and then cut them on our table saw while the next board was running.

I have cut them out of Red Oak, Maple, Pine, Cherry, MDF, and EXTIRA MDF. Each one was different RPMs and Peck amounts. What will you be cutting the rossettes out of?

Zach

Rob Davis · Post by **Rob Davis** » Sun, Sep 03 2006, 5:15PM

Zach, Quartered White Oak

Zach Froble · Post by **Zach Froble** » Tue, Sep 05 2006, 8:25AM

Rob,

The cutters I am using are Magnate. If you do a quick search on you will find a numerous places selling them. What software are you using for cad/cam. If you want let me know why size cutter you are looking at I will try to give some estimated rpms and feeds.

Zach