I am thinking about the cribbage board that was posted here the other day (It used shotgun shells, not pegs) and I’m thinking of giving that a try. I haven’t had 100% success rate on drilling though, especially for 1/8" holes (which most cribbage boards will be). Since I’ll be drilling like 120 holes, does anyone have a great bit that would work well for that? Specifically, I want to avoid tear out on the surface, since it will be handled up close, any blemishes will be pretty obvious. I’ll probably find some hardwood to do this on, and I will definitely add the arrows :).
1/8" end mill, then sand the top? Or you could go crazy and use a 1/16" end mill and helical drill it.
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I don’t have great luck drilling either. I know most everyone uses ESTLCAM but I use CamBam to generate my gcode. It has a peck drilling feature that is pretty neat. You could mimic it in ESTLCAM by drilling the same hole several times a little bit deeper each time.
My best luck is definitely using helical drilling with an undersized mill.
My family’s ancestral game is Aggravation. The holes for marbles are 14mm dia.
CamBam has a neat spherical hole script that allowed me to make a perfect 40% deep spherical hole for the 14mm marbles.
I appreciate all of you, Barry & Ryan and many others great input on this forum
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That’s a nice thing to hear. Thanks.
Estlcam will also do the pecking. I think it’s depth is determined by the DOC and it will come back up. I just get chip out with my 1 flute upcut (in plywood, so maybe it won’t matter) and bad bad stuff happens when I do a downcut more than about 2mm. I have done 2mm depth holes in the past, and just finished up with the drill press. That would probably be faster anyway.
I agree that helical is also safer, even with a downcut.
But big CNC machines use actual specialized bits just for drilling though, right? A tool change wouldn’t bother me, especially if the z height wasn’t super critical.
I like Barry’s idea of cutting deep and then planing off the tear out.
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Bad bad stuff is right. I thought the workpiece would swallow the bit, the spindle and me along with it when I tried to drill a deep hole the same size as the bit in one pass!
The big guys use drill bits and peck drilling.
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1/8 in holes are fine its 1/8 in pegs that suck 
I like 1/4 in much better easier to handle and don’t break but they are to big for plastic fork tines or match sticks as replacements I’ll have to measure up crayons everyone has a box of those around.
I was drilling pine and had no tear out but did have feathers on the edges to sand and ream out a little. The holes were with a 1/4 in 2 flute helical drill 4 mm DOC and 800 - 600mm/m (600 was better) 12.6 mm hole. 120 in about 40 min. same with a 1/8 in mill single flute up to about 6.5mm and a standard finish pass full depth and with same speeds. Estlcam does peck drilling just pick drill and use tool diameter you need.
On cherry almost perfect finish I have not tried oak same feed and speed not sure of rpm on mine i have the speed turned down by ear and I’m tone deaf Just waiting for the PID control to go for sale
at full speed 30,000 rpm everything came out burnt at any feed I could run my machine at but lower RPM’s and the burning stopped.
works well but is no PID control
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I am also starting to make cribbage boards and am looking for a good and efficient way to drill many holes. In my case, I have both laser engraving and drilled holes (I may add some routing in future designs). I made a tool holder that allows quick changeover from laser to router but the router seems like it is not ideal for drilling holes. I am thinking of taking one of my old cordless drills and printing a new case for it so that it still fit into my quick change holder. This explanation is a rambling way to ask if it is better to drill holes with a drill (lower speed, higher torque) than with a router. I’m planning in trying it but I thought I’d ask the forum since others have already dealt with this. Thanks!
For small (normal drill bit sized) holes I like using the CNC for spot-drilling the holes only. Then I move to a drillpress to drill the actual holes. I bought some of these to use for the spot-drilling and they seem to work pretty well (I only drill about 1 or 2 mm deep):
They leave a good dimple for the bit in the drill-press to self-align to.
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