Masse Sales recently attended two local trade shows, and needed a way to display CNC router bits, drill bits, HSK63 cutterheads, Powerlock heads, and router pods. I’ve noticed at trade shows most tooling is displayed standing up, which shows off the tooling well, and keeps it from rolling around a table bumping into other tools, so I decided to follow that lead.
The first step was to find a suitable piece of material for the display, which turned out to be a 2.5″ slab of laminated white oak, which was supplied by Swift Sure Milling, who also let me borrow their 6″ long (3″ cutting edge) finishing router bit.
I played around with a number of shapes, and finally decided an arched triangle would fit nicely on the corner of a standard table, and have an eye catching look. The final arrangement of tools was determined by placing the tools on the slab, tracing their locations, and measuring each position. Each location and hole size was then entered into AutoCAD where I also added the triangle shape, and the stepped pattern around the outside. From there I imported a DXF file into AlphaCAM, applied toolpaths, and created the G-code required by our router.
Waving goodbye to my family, I headed into the office for a Saturday morning of CNC routing. When I arrived, I placed the slab on top of a 0.25″ thick piece of MDF to act as a sacrificial spoilboard, and applied hold down pressure using our 10hp vacuum pump. Using our C.R. Onsrud CNC router, the shape of the display and the holes were hogged out with a an LMT-Onsrud chipbreaker-finisher router bit, and finished using the borrowed finishing cutter. The smaller holes and grooves were then cut with a variety of smaller router bits.
Back home for some light sanding to smooth out the top, and to break the sharp edges, and it was ready for a couple of applications of clear Watco Danish Oil finish, and some time on a drying rack.
The display was a great conversation piece at the two trade shows we attended, and still looks great after repeated trips in my vehicle. In hindsight I think I should have taken more pictures of the process, but I’m very happy with the end result.
