CNC Router American Flag with Liberty Quote

thingiverse

I found this amazing image on Pinterest (https://momsaysitscool.com/products/9880557) and knew instantly it was something my brother would totally love, so I quickly Googled for techniques and settled on the following method based on a post from How to Paint V Carve Clean. First, I lightly sanded and cleaned a piece of 1/2" plywood before applying a layer of polyurethane. I let it dry overnight, then poured a generous coat of rubber cement over the top and spread it around with an old gift card, scraping off as much as possible with the card. After waiting for 30 minutes, I placed a layer of transfer tape (used for vinyl graphics) over the board and rubbed it well with a stiff brush. Next, I routed out the design, sprayed it with black acrylic paint, and once dry, the transfer tape and most of the rubber cement pulled right off. Unfortunately, some of the rubber cement came off during routing and bled onto the non-routed wood. To fix this, I used files and sandpaper to remove the extra paint, routed a small round-over into the edges of the board, and applied a coat of polyurethane over everything. The included files are the flag SVG and the Carbide Create files I used. Since the design was large, I broke it into three parts so I could run each piece one at a time.