CNC - Rounding Edges - Please help

Tumble them. Try putting some in the dryer on “fluff”. A tumble bucket with BB’s?

-- The hump with the stump and the pump!

I would be careful for pieces that small as choking hazards. Do a google search for “roundover bits for CNC” and you will find a lot of solutions and ideas.

-- NorthWoodsMan

Use a plunge round over bit. Amana makes a few. Here is the model number for one of them

Amana Tool – 56125

Amazon has them.

-- Grant Wilkinson, Ottawa ON

Tried a router with a small bit, but never found a way to hold them safely. Then mounted a dremel upside down in a table. A mini router table if you will with a small 1/8 rounding bit. Worked ok but slow. Ended up using a sanding mop like the pic below. It will not round the edges, but it will soften them. This was the best/fastest solution I’ve found so far. Anxious to hear if anyone has a better idea.

-- Don't outsmart your common sense

Cut it in two passes on your CNC. First pass with veining bit, 2nd pass with you current cutter. Since parts aren’t separated until 2nd pass registration should be perfect.

-- The hump with the stump and the pump!

Use a plunge round over bit. Amana makes a few. Here is the model number for one of them

Amana Tool – 56125

Amazon has them.

- gwilki

+1

Run the plunge round over first then cut the parts out.
It seems counter intuitive but it works great.

-- "Hard work is not defined by the difficulty of the task as much as a person's desire to perform it.", DS251

Use a plunge round over bit. Amana makes a few. Here is the model number for one of them

Amana Tool – 56125

Amazon has them.

- gwilki

+1

Run the plunge round over first then cut the parts out.
It seems counter intuitive but it works great.

- DS

How do you round both sides with this method?

-- Don't outsmart your common sense

Ah, well, that’s a bit trickier.

Depending on your setup;

If your machine has calibrated reference pins or a fence you can make mirrored front and back programs. Cut the back then flip, cut the front and outlines. (Sometimes called sixth face cutting.)

Some folks, without this reference, drill reference holes through the front and into the spoil board that will fit reference dowels for the flip.

At work, we run nested sheets of cabinet parts on a very large industrial CNC.
Detailing is always run first. Typically, drills, then dadoes, then profiles, then outlines last.

If we can design out any 6th face operations, that is what we do.
Flipping large sheets of material isn’t very fun.

-- "Hard work is not defined by the difficulty of the task as much as a person's desire to perform it.", DS251

It depends somewhat on your CAM software. I use Vectric VCarvePro. With it, I can do two-sided machining. I do quite a bit of it. I do it as DS mentions. I drill locator dowel holes in the piece and corresponding holes in my spoil board. Take a look on Mark Lindsay’s CNC Youtube channel for details.

For your project I would use the roundover bit on the top surface. Then, I would flip the piece, use the roundover on the bottom surface, then use an end mill to cut them out.

-- Grant Wilkinson, Ottawa ON