Kickbacks while using Duplicarver

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StabwoodCustoms

New User
Stephen
New user, long time creeper haha. Would love some help with my issue.

So I bought a used duplicarver today on craigslist. It has a black and Decker 1hp 7604 type 4 router. I bought new bits for my project since it didn't come with any. My issue is that I'm getting a lot of kickbacks and jerks which is ruining a lot of material. Extra info, I am using stabilized wood. If anyone has recommendations for preventing the jerks, I'd love to hear them. Thanks!

Pic of my machine
20180701_152704.jpg

Pic of what I'm trying to duplicate
20180627_131641.jpg
 

Graywolf

Board of Directors, President
Richard
Staff member
Corporate Member
Without seeing you and this contraption in action I'd guess based on your discription that you are trying to take to deep a cut and are trying to take heavy passes. If you make light passes that will help.
 

ScottM

Scott
Staff member
Corporate Member
Stephen welcome to the forum. I hope you stick around so we can get to know you.
 

ehpoole

Administrator
Ethan
Without seeing you and this contraption in action I'd guess based on your discription that you are trying to take to deep a cut and are trying to take heavy passes. If you make light passes that will help.

To add to the above, also be aware that the direction of travel of a router matters a great deal if you are working an outside edge or are not surrounding the bit with virgin uncut wood on all sides when routing an interior area (such as if widening a slot or enlarging an interior space that is no longer uncut on all sides of the bit ). When climb cutting (traveling the wrong direction) using a router bit the bit will attempt to aggressively self feed resulting in it taking much too large a bite resulting in severe kickback (and at worse complete and dangerous loss of control of the router itself if not very firmly gripped) -- so climb cutting is something you almost universally want to avoid with a router (with very rare exceptions in which you attempt only the shallowest of cuts, but that is an advanced router operation and not something for beginners).

In extremely hard woods, like Purpleheart, that are prone to splitting you must also take very shallow passes or the cutting edge is likely to catch on some grain and essentially cleave the wood in two causing the wood to essentially kickback and then explode as the pieces impact the spinning bit.

If you do not have a fair bit of experience using a router freehand then you may find it very helpful to get some experience using a router freehand before you try using the router with optional accessories. This will give you a feel for how the router works and how to safely handle the router so that when you go back and try to use your duplicator you have a much better feeling for what it is you are asking the router to do and whether what you are trying to do, and the way with which you are attacking your problem, is something that works with a router or if you are literally trying to fight with your router by asking it to do something that it should not be doing (in which case, you need to rethink the operation).

Good luck and let us know how things progress.
 

sawman101

Bruce Swanson
Corporate Member
Good to hear from you Stephan. I have been the owner of 2 of the Duplicarvers, the one you pictured and a larger version. Oddly, I never used either one. I was given one by a friend that I fixed to working condition, then gave it away. The second Duplicarver came from my brother, and there again I had to buy a B&D router on Ebay to get that one in running condition, then I sold it, as I spend most of my time doing scroll saw or lathe work, as well as general woodworking. I hope you get the hang of your machine and get a good amount of enjoyment from it.
 

StabwoodCustoms

New User
Stephen
Thanks for all the replies. Its nice to see a community come out to try and help a newcomer. I am just starting my wood working journey so I admit I have limited experience when it comes to a router.

If you do not have a fair bit of experience using a router freehand then you may find it very helpful to get some experience using a router freehand before you try using the router with optional accessories. This will give you a feel for how the router works and how to safely handle the router so that when you go back and try to use your duplicator you have a much better feeling for what it is you are asking the router to do and whether what you are trying to do, and the way with which you are attacking your problem, is something that works with a router or if you are literally trying to fight with your router by asking it to do something that it should not be doing (in which case, you need to rethink the operation).

This is something I will be doing over the course of the week before using the duplicarver again. I did make a small jig prior to buying this that helped a ton. I never considered wood grain as an issue but again, limited knowledge plays a role. I really like the idea of manually making something vs buying a cnc so I'm hoping I can get the hang of this stuff.
 

Jeff

New User
Jeff
I didn't know what a multi carver is used for so I looked around. Yours has a Black & Decker #7604 1 hp, type 4 router that's no longer made and most of the parts are also not available. It's more like a trim router, but not hand held, and fixed in the Duplicarver mechanism.

I bought new bits for my project since it didn't come with any.

Where'd you get those"? 1/4" shank regular router bits and not "Dremel" router bits?

After looking at a few Duplicarver type videos and the pic of what you're trying to duplicate with stabilized wood I think it's the wrong tool for the project! How'd you get the idea to use a Duplicarver for this project?
 

StabwoodCustoms

New User
Stephen
I didn't know what a multi carver is used for so I looked around. Yours has a Black & Decker #7604 1 hp, type 4 router that's no longer made and most of the parts are also not available. It's more like a trim router, but not hand held, and fixed in the Duplicarver mechanism.

Where'd you get those"? 1/4" shank regular router bits and not "Dremel" router bits?

After looking at a few Duplicarver type videos and the pic of what you're trying to duplicate with stabilized wood I think it's the wrong tool for the project! How'd you get the idea to use a Duplicarver for this project?

Correct though it can be replaced with any router that will fit. Its just a couple nuts and bolts that hold a clamp to apply pressure. The bits were purchased from Lowes and are Bosch. The person that sold this to me said any 1/4" bit would work(that's incorrect as I also tried Skill but they didn't fit).

I got the idea after going through several people that owned a cnc machine. Being jerked around by said people or running into crazy high setup fees, I decided to attempt this process myself. I am currently $500 in the hole after dealing with 2 cnc owners. Not a pleasant experience. Plus a cnc requires a file to work, I can't afford to create a new file for every type of box I want to replicate. I thought this item would suffice in helping me to create the products I wanted. I am open to suggestions if you have any as to what would be ideal for what I'm trying to do.
 

Jeff

New User
Jeff
I am open to suggestions if you have any as to what would be ideal for what I'm trying to do.

No suggestions specifically, I was just trying to understand the technology and what you are trying to do and I'm typically curious.

Why do you want to duplicate this box (dimensions, length, width, depth?), it looks like plastic not wood). What is the box used for (it says "beater box mod")?

https://www.ncwoodworker.net/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=27766&d=1530498280

A CNC system is probably your best bet but they are pricey. Some NCWW members have taken the CNC plunge but I don't know the specifics.
 
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StabwoodCustoms

New User
Stephen
No suggestions specifically, I was just trying to understand the technology and what you are trying to do and I'm typically curious.

Why do you want to duplicate this box (dimensions, it looks like plastic not wood). What is the box used for (it says "beater box mod")?

https://www.ncwoodworker.net/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=27766&d=1530498280


Me and my partner make blanks for box modders to mill into vape boxes. The blue metal box in the picture is a style a customer uses. They wanted a box made like that one just out of stabilized wood. Their customers are bored with the standard metal box.
 

CDPeters

Master of None
Chris
I would try using a spiral up-cut bit rather than a straight-flute, that will help clear the chips better and the shearing action may reduce the tendency for it to catch as much.
 

ehpoole

Administrator
Ethan
A few more remarks now that I have a bit more time.

If 1/4" (6.35mm) bits do not fit your router then it may use European 6mm bits, which will have a very slightly narrower shank than 1/4", or 8mm bits, which have a considerably larger diameter shank than 1/4" (12mm is also common in Europe and is roughly equivalent to our 1/2”, or 12.7mm, shank bits). I suspect that many 1 to 1-1/2 HP routers of the era would likely fit the duplicator as many were based upon the dimensions established by the venerable Porter Cable 690 series router of that period (somewhere packed away still I have several brands of routers from the 70s, 80s, and 90s all of which are largely, if not completely, compatible with my old 1-1/2 HP PC 690 router and it's fixed and plunge bases of the era). Some routers incorporate replaceable collets such that you could replace a 6mm collet with a 1/4" collet, for example, while many cheaper low-end routers often milled the collet directly onto the motor shaft and is, thus, irreplaceable (I would expect the B&D to be in this latter group of fixed collet routers).

What you are trying to duplicate is a very common electronics project box and they are widely available in both plastic and aluminum in a wide variety of sizes for usually quite reasonable prices (particularly relative to trying to manufacture such for yourself), even more so in the secondary, surplus, or Chinese markets. If your goal is to recreate such in wood then be aware that you will need to modify the wall thicknesses as wood is not a perfectly uniform material and can flex quite a lot at such thin thicknesses, it will also tend towards being brittle at those dimensions since many woods can cleave relatively easily both with and across the grain (ray cell faults run perpendicular to the grain) when so thin, particularly if using certain species of wood -- in thicker materials those are not usually of great concern but they become increasingly important at very short or narrow dimensions (some species being far more prone than others).

If it is simply the wood look that interests you most, you can finish a plastic or aluminum box with a faux grain pattern to simulate the wood appearance and it can be rather convincing to those not intimately familiar with wood when done right. Such faux finishes are frequently used to make metal and fiberglass doors appear as if they were wood. You can find instructional guides and the special wood grain applicator online pretty easily.

But also keep in mind what those duplicators were intended to replicate. They were meant to roughly duplicate 3 dimensional relief carvings and other fairly shallow works. I don't know that they have the sort of rigidity and absolute precision and parallelism necessary to reliably recreate the box you are trying to duplicate.

If you really want or need that box in wood, you will almost certainly find it much easier to create by hand on a router table with carefully (and rigidly secured) stops and then gradually mill away up to a couple of millimeters of depth with each pass (how much per pass will depend upon the characteristics of the wood you wish to use and the diameter of your bit's cutters). The best bit for roughing out is an upcut spiral bit as they are not prone to catching on grain and they will draw most of the waste below the router table (where ideally you would have a dust collector to catch that waste). The same for the lip around the lid, though you will find it far easier if you drop the rounded cove/corner sections of the lip -- just mill them as a square box shaped lip and make the walls thick enough to accommodate four small neodymium magnets, one per corner 1/8", 3/16", and 1/4" neodymium magnets are all easy enough to come by both in craft supply shops as well as online and are inexpensive. However, you will find life far easier if you make the sides out of flat stock and then finger-joint the four sides together.

I would suggest a minimum walk thickness of 3/16" for most hardwoods, at least 1/4" for the top (to allow for a 1/16 to 3/32" raised interior lip) with a lip width of around 3/32" so that it is not too fragile, and a bottom thickness of 1/8" (if trapped in dados) to 3/16". You can then go any of several routes to attach the bottom -- a rabbeted ledge, a routed dado to trap the bottom in, or glue blocks into the four corners of the box and glue, screw, or nail the bottom in place (corner blocks would also allow thinner walls yet still allow for decent sized magnets at the corners if you wish. I know such is quite doable as I have made such boxes myself using just a router table to route the box and a tablesaw if building the walls and bottom from flat panels and finger jointing them with 1/8" or 3/32" fingers (base the finger width upon the width of your chosen tablesaw blade, ideally a blade with flat-top grind teeth or a mix of ATB plus flat-top teeth) -- a fingervjointing jig is easy to make for your tablesaw and attaches to your miter gauge to index each finger. A jointer and thickness planer are also desirable to square and flatten your panels, though not absolutely necessary, and a bandsaw is very desirable if making boxes more than around 3" deep.

An even easier, albeit much more expensive, route is to use a good CNC machine to mill such a box from a blank of wood as that is what CNC excels at doing as a good CNC will be both stout (rigid) enough and have the necessary positioning accuracy to mill such a box with a mote than acceptable success rate. It gets more iffy and may require more tries if using cheaper CNCs as you do largely get what you pay for in a CNC machine (generally speaking, though the lower end has been making improvements with each new year).

Best of luck!
 

tri4sale

Daniel
Corporate Member
Interesting idea, but I really think you've got the wrong tool for the job. I drew up a quick CNC plan, and my CNC can probably make this box in about 5 minutes of cut time. This is the type of project CNC's excel at, repetitive cuts. I could slap a slab on the table and knock out a bunch of these at once in the time that tool would take to do one. Sorry that some other CNC operators have done you wrong, that sucks you've lost $500 already. Some professional shops have a base line fee, and don't want to do small jobs.

attachment.php

This was a 5 minute sketch in the software, so it's not a perfect match of what you were looking for.

So while the above isn't helpful for you and your machine, along that line about all I can offer is to not shop at Lowe's for router bits, head over to Klingspor's in Cary and pick up some router bits from them. I use Whiteside bits a lot in my CNC router and have good success with them. When I first got my CNC I picked up a few bits from Lowe's. Fine for experimenting and learning, but I found that higher quality bits do a better job.
 

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