[Johan von Konow] wanted to make something special as a wedding gift to his wife. He decided a pair of interlocking miniature rings would be the perfect keepsake. He started his search for a way to mill the wooden rings from a solid piece of wood, and documented his journey for our enjoyment.
This project poses an interesting challenge. Most CNC mills offer three axes of freedom, but he only had a 2D mill meant for routing PCBs. This means the cuts can only be made from the top down at one depth. In order to fabricate the rings he needed to cut from more than one side. With more study, [Johan] discovered that it would be necessary to cut the wood stock from eight different angles before the rings would be complete.
The solution to the problem was to first mill a jig to hold the wood stock. It has positions to hold the stock at each different angle. The final step before starting the cut was to mill the stock itself to perfectly fit his custom jig. We think it turned out great, thanks in part to hand filing, sanding, and polishing to smooth the marks left from milling.

Filed under: cnc hacks