CARMEN Brussels Jewelry

This collection is inspired by Art Deco.

The idea is to reproduce details, shapes, sensation of Art Deco's architecture, furniture and lifestyle in metal.

I work on 20 and 24 gauge brass sheets with the CNC.

Fix and unfix your metal:

I paste it with double-sided adhesive-tape on the whole surface. To be sure that the surface is really flat, use a piece of wood and a hammer to flatten it gently. To unpaste your sheet without folding it, spread a good amount of methyl alcohol in the cutted edges, cover with plastic, wait for 5 to 10 minutes and unpaste carefully. To clean my pieces thoroughly, I prefer using aceton on a fabric handkerchief.

The cutting:

The milling cutters are 1 flute flat nose 1,5 mm diameter at cutting edge. I really recommend to start with any of cheap ones, same diameter. Because a good one can cost up to 30 euros per unit and experimenting debuts can be (Oh!) so expensive and (Oh!) so frustrating when after one pass only your cutter brakes. But then good quality cutters give you a much smoother finish wich a quick hand sanding makes perfect.

Parameters:

Feed rate:  16 000 tour/min

Speed: 5 to 10 mm/ sec

Pass depth: 0,1 mm

After verifying all parameters, I determine my X, Y. Then comes the touchier step: use a joystick to go down really slowly, engine on, by 1/10 mm and then 1/100 mm to define Z. Stick your nose the closest to the cutter: when you can see firsts teeny-weeny metal flakes fly, stop going down, lift  your cutter of 2/10 mm up and you have your Z. Congrats!

Then your can just press the holy START MACHINING button and keep an eye on your work to avoid mistakes or accidents.

Enjoy!