Most recent Canadian military unit badges

[aluomala]

I figured I would post a few of my latest projects.

The last unit I served in,  Lord Strathcona's Horse (Royal Canadians) [LdSH(RC)], an armoured unit, asked me to make up 2 plaques for them to bring to France later this month to mark the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Moreuil Wood, one of the last major cavalry charges of WW I. One of the plaques will be presented to the town of Moreuil, and the other to the gentleman, Jean-Paul Brunel, who is the caretaker of the land that the battle was fought on, and has done a great deal over the years to honour and maintain the diginity of the site.

First photo: 15" diameter plaque with the LdSH(RC) unit badge. A local hardwood dealer, Gary Chanin, donated the wood for this piece from his personal stock (this piece was gift from someone for his help). It is birch from the Cascade Mountain range of the British Columbia mountains, near the Washington state border.

Second photo: 18" x 18" walnut plaque. This wood would have came from central Canada, likely southern Ontario or Quebec. I thought it would be best to utilize wood from Canada, to represent the soldiers that would have fought in that battle.

Third photo: Details of the badge.

Note: The inscriptions on both plaque read (in English): 100th anniversary (top), Battle of Moreuil Wood (bottom). The maple leaves on the borders were meant to represent the styles of the badges that the soldiers would have worn in WW I era (the life-like maple leaf) and the more symmetrical modern badge that soldiers of today wear in the Canadian Armed Forces.

Attachments:

[aluomala]

More photos:

Attachments:

[aluomala]

First photo: Crib board for a rest area in the unit lines, using the less official crest. I think I posted this one before, but I didn't show that it was a two-piece affair. Lot's of interest/request for this style.

Second/third photos: A request from a former Canadian paratrooper who served in the Canadian Airborne Regiment. Quarter-sawn maple.

Attachments:

[arsystems]

these are really a work of art man, the detail is amazing.

[traindriver]

Those are great! The detail is fantastic!

[ricphoto]

Inspirational work...so clean and crisp with a great sense of design

I'll keep copies of those near so I have a great reminder of the quality of work I'm chasing

Thanks for sharing...

[cletus]

Those are tops!!! Detail is amazing. I can only dream of doing that kind of work.

[cletus]

How many toolpaths do you set up for some of those?

[Deleted]

Beautiful work, clearly a lot of time spent on the design and set up of tool paths to get a great finished product.

[redwood]

I echo those comments above.

[aluomala]

Thanks for all the kind words, all!

I generally only do a roughing pass (Amana 46294 1/4" ball nose, 100ipm, .125" DOC (depth of cut), then a finish pass with Amana 46282 taper ball 1/32"radius (125ipm, 7% stepover). Occasionally I will do a second finishing pass (on the letters on the badge) but I will create a vector border around the letters (using the circular border as the outer/inner edge, or the banner edges depending on the text) and run a 1/64" radius bit only in those areas. I tried rest machining, but it is too hit or miss and leaves halos, and is generally too much work (to create and clean up vectors, and then sanding out the halos). Learn to create your own vectors (bezier curves especially): Al's tip of the day!

Other than the roughing/finishing passes, I just do a profile with a compression bit, doing a separate last pass (usually .05") and make sure I add ramps to tool paths. I don't like cleaning up tabs, so I only use them if I can't trust 2-sided tape to hold down the finished piece (I have had issues with the wood curling (so much material gets removed on some of these, it happens more often than not), so I will do tabs if I'm not confident about the wood. One trick (not really a trick but something i learned along the way)I do, especially for visualizations (more for the customer than for me) is to make a second profile toolpath immediately after you create your proper one (with tabs), but DON'T put tabs on it, and run it AFTER the proper profile toolpath. I generally append the toolpath title with "DON'T SAVE!!!!!!) so I don't accidentally save/run that path. Doing that "trick" allows you to double click on the waste wood (after running the toolpath simulations) to remove it for preview purposes. Not much of a tip, but it might help someone save some time (I used to only have the one toolpath for the profile, and then uncheck the "Add tabs to toolpath", run a simulation, and then check "Add tabs...." and recalculate.... I forgot to do the checkmark in the "Add tabs...." and when I ran the toolpaths for real, I destroyed the piece because there were no tabs and it shifted on the final pass..... Lesson learned...)

The design work (a general weakness of mine, since I am not very artistic) was relatively easy, mainly due to the tools in Aspire. I was initially going to create a "trench" and place the maple leaves in that (so they were just below the level of the surrounding areas) but I opted not to, mainly because of the amount of touch-up work that would have been required (sanding, finishing, etc. I am going to start doing more 2 (or more) piece projects, especially for any of the round one, since it is so hard to get into the flat spots to sand. If I create a separate ring, and do all the finishing on the main disk part first, and then place the ring onto the project, I will knock off at least 25-30% of my sanding issues. I may also do the badge as a separate piece, but that might prove too difficult (especially if I have a slight bulge outwards (like a shield) as I did in that one piece). If I do it perfectly flat, that would be fairly simple then (and super easy to sand/finish the disc before placing the badge and then ring on the backing piece.

There was LOTS of sanding and finishing on those 2 major pieces. LOTS! Those were labours of love for me (I didn't get paid for them) since they are going to be presented to the town where one of my unit's most historical battles was fought (there was 1 Victoria Cross (the British Commonwealth equivalent to the Medal of Honor) awarded to Lt Flowerdew (posthumously) for that battle, which is celebrated by my old unit every year around March 30th.

Allan

[cletus]

Al, thanks alot. I appreciate the info. Didn't know they made a 1/64" bit. I really enjoy seeing your work.

[Deleted]

Mar 26, 2018 20:58:01 GMT -5 cletus said:

Al, thanks alot. I appreciate the info. Didn't know they made a 1/64" bit. I really enjoy seeing your work.

Carbide tooling goes down to a few thousandths of an inch typically for circuit board manufacturing but also for metal usage sometimes, know as micromachining, and requires special techniques (speeds and feeds) to not break the bits.

[aluomala]

Mar 26, 2018 20:58:01 GMT -5 cletus said:

Al, thanks alot. I appreciate the info. Didn't know they made a 1/64" bit. I really enjoy seeing your work.

I got the 1/32" diameter bit (1/64"radius) with the AMS-136 (link) set. I use the 1/16"diameter (46282) and the 1/4" ball nose (46294) all the time, and the rest only occasionally. If I had to do it again, I would have ordered 5 each of the 2 I just mentioned, and maybe 2 or 3 of the 1/32"diameter (46280) just in case. I'm sure I'll find use for some of the others, but it doesn't feel right to spend all that money for a "just in case" tool.

I also recommend the 1/4" compression bit (46322). There are ways to use a down spiral bit , then upspiral (or is it vice versa?!?), but I feel that it's easier to just do one toolpath and use the compression bit (no chipping on top or bottom).

I am quite new to a lot of this, so my advice needs to be taken with a grain of salt (i.e there might be better/easier ways to do what I'm doing, but I seem to have found what works for me thus far). I am determined to buy the best bits/tools that I can afford (rather than cheaping out and half-assing everything like I did when I started out) so I can save time/money/frustration.

Allan

[stevem]

From looking at what you're making and the beautiful work you do, I really don't think you're that new at using the cnc machine.
You're work is beautiful Al.

[aluomala]

Mar 27, 2018 18:06:15 GMT -5 stevem said:

From looking at what you're making and the beautiful work you do, I really don't think you're that new at using the cnc machine.
You're work is beautiful Al.

Thanks for the kind words steve.

I have been doing CNC stuff for about 4 years total, but nothing even close to what I've done since I got my Axiom machine. I have been getting a LOT of advice/tips from a guy that has been doing the same thing I am now (with a AR4Pro+), but he's been at it since last fall, so he's brought me up to speed very quickly.

The Vectric and Axiom forums have given me a lot of guidance as well, so I have achieved a lot more in such a short time than could be expected if I were slogging it out on my own. When a project takes 10-20 hours to see the results, you want to make sure you are doing everything as efficiently as possible.

Allan

[redwood]

I don't trust 2 sided tape too much. I've had a couple of slight movements that were enough that I now pretty much use tabs. A spindle sander is great for removing those tabs and any other imperfections on the edges after cutout. They are relatively inexpensive, as well.