Herbs and Spices Finish Grinder - Fusion360

This project calls for a .60 in. thick hardwood. If you don’t have a thickness planer, you can use your X-carve to plane to this correct thickness. This can be done using an Easel project to reduce the size of the 3/4 in. thick wood in the bill of materials.

This assumes you are using the Dewalt 611, although it might be possible using other spindles. I have also done the stiffening mods. My steel grate was carved from stainless steel so the stiffening mods were probably a necessity. If you use the anodized aluminum, this may not be needed.

Make sure you have downloaded the Fusion 360 post-processor from Inventables and loaded it in to Fusion. In the CAM section, choose each setup individually and generate the g-code (post process). One thing to note, the post-processor from Inventables (at least the version I have) will not add the S<spindleRPM> M3 to the beginning if you are using automatic spindle controlling. So you will need to edit your g-code to add this in at the beginning, for each g-code file.

Setup your wood on the X-carve table and zero your axes accordingly. I didn’t spend the time figuring out how to get Fusion 360 to be able to carve the top and bottom as part of the same setup, so you will need to carve one and then the other as two different operations. This should be easy since it is the same 1/8th endmill bit.

If using the aluminum, this could be a lot quicker than 60 minutes. Since I used stainless steel, it took some time due to the very small depth of cut and feed rate. I got a small sheet of stainless steel from a dollar store spatula and just used tin snips to cut it off from the handle.

I did try the aluminum setup as a test and it worked, so you should be good whatever you choose.

Load up a 1/16 in. endmill. The tolerances are very tight here, so make sure it is 1/16 in. Then setup your sheet and zero your axes and let it carve. I taped this down with double sided tape. It makes it easy because the removed aluminum will stick to it and make cleanup easy. I used WD40 every once in a while as it carved and blew the shavings off with an air-compressor, but that probably was overkill.

As a side note, you might want to use a micrometer to measure the exact thickness of your sheet and adjust the Fusion 360 project before you generate your g-code.

Once carved, sand to your liking. The little “tabs” on the sides of the steel grate are used to wedge it in to the bottom bowl. It most likely won’t fit, by design. Simply take wire cutters and cut the tabs to form a straight edge to fit better but when wedged in to the bowl, prevent it from slipping as you turn the top. The tabs should be aligned parallel to the curved openings on the bottom.

I chose to leave it raw wood, but you might be able to finish it with some mineral oil. Just make sure whatever you use is food safe!

This turned out really great and works perfectly. In the future, I will add a bottom that the polygon fits in to catch the oregano. It should be a very simple design, basically the same polygon with a slightly larger offset and a ridge for the bottom of the grinder to sit on. If and when I make this, I’ll add a follow up.

Update: The Fusion360 project has been updated with a catcher. I also fixed a small toolpath error I had accidentally introduced after I had made the project.