Thread: Best way to cut out 25mm disks?

A hole saw without the center bit should work to give you an oversized blank; you'd need to run it in a drill press with the workpiece tightly clamped down.
Unfortunately it would still require clean up although a simple jig could be made if you own a disc/belt sander or a wood lathe. I take it you need to make a lot of these discs?

How about a top guided bearing router bit ran a good 25mm disk with the stock underneath ? Probably need a packer around the outside to balance the router on. Small good disk with a 25mm hole saw then the packer with something like a 75mm holesaw ?

Cut a hole in a piece of scrap with a 25 mm id hole saw.
remove the centre drill.
Clamp the scrap to the wanted material.
Using the already cut hole as a guide cut the disk.
Reclamp to a new spot and repeat as desired.

Slight change of tack, part off 6mm sections of a inch dowel

To reduce clean up, follow DavidG's method and have another board under your blank. So you have scrap as a guide, the material you want the disc from and another piece of scrap underneath. Make sure all are clamped or screwed together.

Hi Dengy

Hole saw will work fine, but it is a pain to get the disks out of the centre of the saw tube...

Alternatively, if you have access to a CNC, its easy peasy.

Or, band saw and smooth on a disk sander.


Cheers

Graeme

Thanks Graeme, followed your advice and found a couple of companies who had CNC routers in Townsville, so glued the 150 x 260 x12 board to a 12 mm MDF substrate with 200mm surround space for better clamping, drew it up on AutoCAD and supplied a DXF file, and got it cut. The resulting output was a board of 15 disks all glued to the MDF.

Cut the output into 3 strips containing 5 disks each, and then ran each strip on edge through the table saw to separate the disks from the substrate. Was able to control the thickness of the disks that way too. Very happy with the result. Thanks for the suggestion, Graeme

I’d be curious to know what that cost?

Just for future possible use myself.

Cheers
Arron

This was a freebie, Arron, a Xmas present, the guy said. I really appreciated it, as he was in the thick of his Xmas rush, and fitted my small job in. Suspect he liked the variety. But I slipped him $20. Will chase up a price from another mob if you like.

Yep. I’d be curious to know. I am becoming increasingly receptive to the idea of outsourcing small tricky bits instead of stubbornly continuing to do everything myself - even just for the things I make for our home.

I find with my DIY furniture building I’m becoming more interested in the big picture (ie design) and less and less in sweating the small detail. If I could just magic away the time-consuming stuff then that’s worth paying for.

I don’t want my own CNC, but I’d love to be able to navigate my way around getting it done.

Got me thinking. Won’t sleep now.

Originally Posted by Arron

Yep. I’d be curious to know. I am becoming increasingly receptive to the idea of outsourcing small tricky bits instead of stubbornly continuing to do everything myself - even just for the things I make for our home.

I find with my DIY furniture building I’m becoming more interested in the big picture (ie design) and less and less in sweating the small detail. If I could just magic away the time-consuming stuff then that’s worth paying for.

I don’t want my own CNC, but I’d love to be able to navigate my way around getting it done.

Got me thinking. Won’t sleep now.

Good Morning Arron

You sound a little like me; I have adopted the following strategies:

Case work - For cabinets I get a local joiner to supply, cut and edgeband melamine and MDF panels. He can buy the sheets much cheaper than I, cuts to an accuracy of less than 0.1 mm and his industrial weight edgebander is far better than any "iron on" stuff. Cost is around what I would pay for the sheets, and there are no cutting errors and I do not have to breathe MDF fumes or dust. Win, Win.

Curved work - These comments apply equally to CNC routting, laser cutting and 3D-printing, all of which I have access to but do not own. The high cost part (aka time) is in the programming, as is the design element. You need to be able to do CAD drawing on a program such as Autocad, Rhino, even Sketchup, and then it will convert the drawing into a format that your machine can read - such as a DXF file. Once a usable DXF file is created the rest is quite quick and relatively inexpensive.

I learned to do CAD drawing on Sketchup and now wish that I had not; it makes too many approximations and short cuts and teaches you bad habits - took a lot of effort to "unlearn" ! Then I did Autocad which essentilly invented the genre; it is the old standard, still a professional favourite and widely used, but it is being overtaken by newer programs. Then I learned Rhino which is easier to use than Autocad especially in 3D applications - it is now my favourite. Learning any of these programs will involve a substantial investment of time and, in my experience, it is a false economy to be swayed by the "free" cost of Sketchup.

Many will disagree.


Fair Winds

Graeme

I’d throw in laying veneer as something else I’m way over doing myself - especially when I can get the veneer supplied and professionally pressed for less then the cost of simply purchasing the veneer myself.

Anyone know a CNC place on the Central Coast (NSW) that is approachable and amendable to smaller jobs?

you can stack cut four disks at a time on scroll saw and not have any clean-up I have successfully done this for sixty or more disks the same size.

Arron, I got a quote today from another mob in Townsville to cut 15 discs out of a piece of 12mm silky oak using their CNC controlled router, with an AutoCAD .dxf file supplied by me. Some time next year. They wanted $225 + GST. Obviously didn't want the work