Checkering

[sandmandjs]

Hello, I am new to Aspire and I am trying to draw checkering for a gun grip. Unfortunately I have not been very successful. Any guidance or hints would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[Adrian]

Welcome.

The array copy tool is your friend for repetitive patterns like that. There are many, many ways to do it (I'm sure others will post those) but I would draw one line, rotate it to your desired angle, array copy it to make the other lines of that angle. Then you can create a mirror copy of those lines to get the crossing lines. Use a profile toolpath set to be On the vector to machine.

[Jan.vanderlinden]

Well I only have Desktop, but got to thinking "how would I do it?"
> drew a 1 x 3 rectangle
> drew a single vertical line
> did an array copy 1 row, 50 columns, X offset .125
> rotated the array 30°
> mirrored the array
> overlapped the two arrays
> centered the arrays on the rectangle
> did a profile cut with a 90° V bit .06 deep
Hope this helps you out.

[sandmandjs]

Thanks for the quick posts. Going to try your suggestions shortly.

[sandmandjs]

Looks like i figured it out. I took your advise and then did it all in different layers. Thanks for your help.

[Jan.vanderlinden]

That looks good...

[TReischl]

You will probably want to try that out on a scrap piece of your material.

Quite a few years ago I attempted the same sort of thing for a pair of 1911 grips. Very disappointing results. The checkering was very "crumbly". I think that is because router bits are blunt force trauma tools, bashing rather than slicing their way through the wood. A checkering tool slices with a very sharp edge and leaves crisp cuts that have not been subjected to all sorts of forces.

I am thinking there may be some woods that respond better than other. But when I tried it, maple almost worked, walnut was pathetic as well as cherry. At that point I gave up and did something else with the grips.

But hey, we all have to give it a go!

[adze_cnc]

Funny, I was going to post this link by TReischl as I remembered that he had problems then. But I got called away. And when I came back there’s his post above.

[Tailmaker]

I did this many years ago for my son's PPK and found it rather easy with that diamond pattern projected on the 3-D model. I made one in Acacia and one in Mulberry. Both looked good but the grain pattern of the Acacia won out. This was just using a sharp 90-deg v-bit. I cannot post the file here due size and it would be useless for another gun but if somebody is interested, I could save it on Dropbox or mail you directly.

[Jan.vanderlinden]

Beautiful work.
I like the addition of initials.

[wb9tpg]

I’ve played around with checkering and had the best results using 25 lines per inch and a 90 degree v bit.

[adze_cnc]

For the metric folks that’s basically 1 line per mm.