Looks really good!

So, How did you hold down the EIR during machining?

What kind of clearance did you use for the inlay? Did you program that in to the cad model or did you use tool size adjustments for that?

I held the EIR and the maple down with double back tape

Just regular carpet tape or did you use something special?

The other thought I had was that one could use a much thicker piece of stock for the inlay, cut deep but not through and liberate the piece on a table saw. A little risky though. I've done that before (with non CNC parts - possibly a ring of some sort) and kind of recall a piece disintegrating it the pocket when it hit the back teeth on the blade.

Oh, and I hope your wife has a speedy recovery!

Nice CNC work my friend!

But the wives stroke !
I hope she makes a full recovery & you can handle the kids & all !
She needs ya now!
Man -"if ya didn't have bad luck-you'd have NO luck at all"

Mikey

Well, the question wasn't addressed to me, but I cut a lot of inlays on my CNC and I can tell you what I've learned. First, thicker, stronger double sided tape (like the good carpet tape you can buy) doesn't work well. Although I've used a lot of this kind of tape for holding down wood when I don't have a vacuum jig set up to hold it, and it works pretty well in this way, it is too "springy" for accurate inlay cutting. I've found that the really thin, but strong clear double sided tape works well.

The other thing that I've done is to use white glue to glue the inlay to posterboard or thin plywood, and then cut through the inlay material, but not through the backing. With pearl, you can soak the backing/pearl in water and the inlays come loose. Couldn't get by with that for wood inlays, but posterboard sands off really easily. I cut the inlays so that the posterboard is facing up when they're actually inlaid (sometimes this requires reversing the inlay before cutting it). That way, when you sand the inlay flush to the surface it's inlaid in, you sand the posterboard off first.

Just my .02.

Dave