Guilloche!

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Mooselake
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Guilloche!

Post by Mooselake »

After being a guilloche gadfly for a long time I've actually made a couple of them, on a $200US Genmitsu 3018Pro (strangely with a 30x18cm cutting area...).  Not great art (certainly not as good as Art's version in the video), trying to see what the little machine can do.  The material is 22g (+/-) copper anodized aluminum from Home Depot, about 0.6mm thick, and the lines are 0.3mm deep on the square, 0.2mm on the lobed version.   I'm using a 1/8"/3.175mm 20 degree flat V bit, a cheapie provided as a set with the router.  G code came from Carbide Create. It's a learning curve, Art mentions in the video that the lines should be a mm apart, but a mm apart on a 15" laptop screen isn't the same thing as a 50mm cut part, the moose needs more training.  Lots more tweaking of settings to try, and more practice until they start making sense rather than being knobs to twiddle.

Aluminum is a strain for the 100W (yep, about 1/8hp if being generous) 9K rpm spindle, really a 775 vending machine brushed DC motor with an ER11 collet shrink fit on the shaft.  Being impatient I started off at around 600mm/minute and while that will work (the actual cut cross section is quite small) it leaves a burr on both sides.  The second one was 0.2mm DOC and still too fast and detailed.  Cutting the outlines, well, that's a sad story that we'll gloss over other than saying it took multiple g code generations and tweaking the DOC and total cut depth and rinse/repeating until getting through.  Lost steps in the Z direction on the square design and the V bit, but not X and Y. The second was after an endmill swap to a 1/8" flat endmill (shoulda gone smaller...), still lots of passes and retries.  Successful in the end, at least.

I found a possible problem, while exporting an SVG the viewer shows some gaps in a few of the lines.  I have it saved on the laptop (this is a 12" chromebook, like it) and can upload if wanted.  These were cut from DXF files.  The lightly cut area in the square is from the router, wonder if the double sided tape missed a corner and it was a tad low, the spoilboard is surfaced flat, it made the proper passes at the right depth but didn't manage to cut all the lines.  A minor annoyance, at least to me, was not having the settings transfer from inner to outer when hitting next, that might be a nice future option.  I couldn't find a way to recover the settings or go back a level, suspect that's inherent to the wizard but being able to recover a prior design could be nice.

These cut fairly quickly considering the cheap (around $10USD on amazon), underpowered, spindle, around 20 minutes for the design and (need more power Scottie) for cutting the outline. Next CNC session will be making smaller and simpler designs to get both the line spacing, cut depth, and feeds and speeds (well, it can be PWMed but the full tilt no-load boogie is still reported at only around 9K, the cheap optical tach is in the northern moose shop 2000 miles (is that 2800km?) north so we'll leave it at not quite enough).  Think sticking a piece of carbide in a pencil sharpener (a diamond cutter one...) and then grinding the pointy bit to half a circle for the engraving bit so it's a single flute.  After that I can exercise my limited artistic skills, have a 12x24 (30x60cm) piece of material so lots of practice space.

If anybody cares I can do a little review of the router, summary is while it's limited it's a great little toy.  Home switches sitting in an Amazon box, brackets will be cut out of a cheap high density polypropylene cutting board, but that'll wait until after some more guillocheing.  Or maybe after I get tired of clicking the wrong direction on the virtual jogger and run it into the stops a time too many.  Oh yeah, just because it's made of 20x20mm extrusion don't get 20x15 cable chain to sit on top.  Found out that's the ID, not OD, and lets just say it's a little big for the application.  Might soldier through, but will probably get Mr. Bezos to send something smaller and keep the big stuff for another project.

This is the first time I've tried resizing photos on ChromeOS, hope it turns out OK

Kirk


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double-guilloche.jpg
John T
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Re: Guilloche!

Post by John T »

I know you?re just starting down this road, but it looks very impressive to me
1% inspiration 99% try, try again
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Mooselake
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Re: Guilloche!

Post by Mooselake »

I'm doing what I should have done first, and using smaller/less detailed designs to work on cutting depth and speed.  Next step is to hand write some gcode to do a series of shallower cuts, once that's worked out then experiment with the feed rate.  Being impatient I started off too fast yesterday (600mm/min or so) and joined the busta bit club, but since it was just the tip of the 20 degree bit it still works :)  Those first attempts are rough enough to work as sandpaper with the burrs.  Used a 20 because a pack of them came with the machine, need to find out what's recommended rather than just Amazonimaniaing.

More pics soon, plus one from elsewhere to ask Art about when he thaws out from Alaska, wondering if the wiz can do it.  Wonder if Art is interested in rose engine patterns, but need to master, as much as I can, guilloche first.  If you're interested Bill Ooms has created a public domain simulator.  He calls the real one a COrnLathe, computer ornamental lathe and by pure coincidence the southern mooseshop has recently acquired a Jet 1221SP (the COrnLathe is based on an earlier 1220).  Hmm, wonder if that has some cosmic meaning?

A 2x2 eccentric fidget is on the list to try soon!

Kirk
BobL
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Re: Guilloche!

Post by BobL »

Awesome work on the guilloche Kirk, and thanks for sharing.

Cheers
Bob
:)

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Mooselake
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Re: Guilloche!

Post by Mooselake »

Getting there.  No attempt at any actual art in this image, trying for line spacing and twists and turns (hey, I'm an engineer) but getting closer to dialing in the settings.  It helped to get out the ruler and resize the window to the size I was cutting and not full screen for previews.  Most everything was at 100mm/minute.  Those 10mm line segments on the left are depth tests with hand written gcode, 0.05 to 0.35 mm (got carried away, way too deep, broke the tiny tip off the 20 degree bit) in one group, the second group was much shallower.  0.05 looked good in the second batch even with the shortened bit, although I didn't trust my spoilboard milling enough to use it so the bigger design was at 0.1mm (in retrospect 0.05m, that's like 2 thou, would have been just fine).  Nice burr free edges and the detail is getting better.  Might rework the test code to keep 0.05 and experiment with speeds, but the free online feeds and speeds calculator liked 100mm/minute for harder aluminum (said 0KW of cutting power, not really aimed at the 100W spindle market) and a 1 flute carbide bit, and the results look good.  Now I need to develop some artistic technique...

I found another program, Guilloche Maker^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Guillochograph, and downloaded a demo copy just to experiment.  It comes with a number of preset examples but in a brief try I didn't get the hang of it's slider settings.  When I get back to the windows computer (this is a chromebook) I'll post the type of design I really wish I could make and maybe the alaskan cruiser could help me with the settings after his well deserved vacation.  Hope the moose and mosquitos weren't too big a problem...

If you look at the bigger design there's a couple places where it had some sharp angles and changed directions, don't know if that was an artifact from Carbide Create, my selection skills, or the wiz or the way it's supposed to work.

Kirk
Last edited by Mooselake on Wed Aug 21, 2019 5:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Mooselake
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Re: Guilloche!

Post by Mooselake »

BobL wrote: Awesome work on the guilloche Kirk, and thanks for sharing.
Thanks, Bob!  The real awesomeness is from Art, I think they're sort of sad looking and as they say "needs more work".  Hopefully they'll give somebody else a tiny step up the learning curve, or maybe an "I can do better than that".  It is amazing that a $200US CNC router can make guilloche designs on a random piece of big box anodized aluminum, just the operator needs some improvements

I forgot to attach the pictures, oldtimers...

Kirk

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Mooselake
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Re: Guilloche!

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Here's the router, and for the amusement of those with real shops, the spare bedroom setup.  Mrs. Moose just ordered a cleanup...

I think the table, lamp, supply cart, and misc stuff cost more than the router, maybe I should have gone for the 3040 4th axis with an 800w water cooled spindle and set it on some milk crates (around 30 came with the house, the PO was a lawyer and had a big 2x12/milk crate shelf setup for his legal files that we had to disassemble)

I was going to throw in a pic of the 20x15 drag chain I ordered (hey, it's 20mm extrusion) on the router but that's just too embarrassing.  Guess it's been a long time since the last order.

Kirk

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BobL
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Re: Guilloche!

Post by BobL »

Kirk;

lol  I hear ya bud, been ordered by the Mrs for a clean up also, however I do believe more items exist now, not intentionally, just the way things worked out. lol

Great work, thanks for sharing and keep it up.

Cheers
Bob
;)
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Mooselake
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Re: Guilloche!

Post by Mooselake »

Last one today, I promise.  This is the example picture from Guillochograph, linked from the page I referenced above.  I was unable to figure out how to make a similar design with Vexx.  They also have some very cool diamond drag images, but that might be too much to expect from my little guy.  OTOH with a 1/4" ER11 collet and one of those cheaper spring loaded things, hmm.

Kirk

Image
Last edited by Mooselake on Sat Aug 24, 2019 8:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Mooselake
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Re: Guilloche!

Post by Mooselake »

Today's effort, 25x25mm.  Same broken top 20 degree V bit, 0.05mm DOC (had to rezero the bit, the piece of paper I was using is 0.05mm and forgot to compensate for it), 100mm/minute.  Scrubbed with a stiff nylon brush but very little ridging around the cut even before that.  Might need to dig out a new bit and get narrower lines.  Could use a better camera and lighting, the lines are a little out of focus and maybe a smaller light source than the 20W LED in the desk lamp would bring them out better

Kirk
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Hessel Oosten
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Re: Guilloche!

Post by Hessel Oosten »

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Mooselake
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Re: Guilloche!

Post by Mooselake »

Your post was my inspiration to actually try making a guilloche pattern!  It took a while because of some knee problems (you'd think that with two knees, 4 on a moose, that there's enough redundancy it wouldn't matter) it didn't happen until recently.  My results aren't as good as yours, they're on a $200US machine with a 7000 rpm 100W spindle and those cheap flat sided V bits, plus there's operator issues.  I need to find out what angle V bit works best, trying to avoid an Amazon shopping spree and just buy a bunch of them, and the inexpensive assortments are lower angle (10 to 40 iirc) bits.  Might even try an inexpensive diamond drag bit once I get the technique down.

I found that while trying to mouse move the sliders approached and exceeded my dexterity limits that the keyboard arrow keys would work.

I've been whiling away the morning watching YouTube videos on Guilloche (my excuse is limited mobility, but when Mrs. Moose notices that will come to an end) and stumbled across an explanation of how a native french speaker pronounces guilloche; trying to pronounce words I've only seen in writing can be amusing.  FWIW (80% of everything on the Internet is sheep manure), https://youtu.be/qQiQSu1XLTY

Kirk
Hessel Oosten
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Re: Guilloche!

Post by Hessel Oosten »

Kirk,

Great ones are (you probably have seen them):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS_G8Vm1gyQ part 1-5

and:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VKASuwatG0

Hessel
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Mooselake
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Re: Guilloche!

Post by Mooselake »

Thanks, Hessel, I saw the second but not the first series.  Bit bad on the micing but nice to watch.  That sure was a lot of stepping and adjusting to get the watch face pattern, far more than I expected.  Find the right cutter (or drag bit) and CNC sure looks like the way to go.

I saw a video where somebody engraved a penny with a one flute V bit, like mine, with the spindle turned off.  Don't think I want to try it with these skinny bits, but something with a steeper angle might work.  From watching and Internetting around 90s give a more pleasing shape to the cut, allow better definition with closer together lines, and overlap well.  Maybe I'll succumb to temptation (the evils of one click buying) and get a set, can always add to them later, and see if that holds true on the underpowered wonder.

Kirk
Richard Cullin
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Re: Guilloche!

Post by Richard Cullin »

i got one of these

http://cnc-aid.com

to engrave/mill pcb's  , not a great success for that but it does a nice job engraving metals
with those flat v bits.  makes zeroing and doc less critical plus less tip bust offs
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