Well, It has been about 4 months, but I have finally finished my stairs. I decided against my cut through design on the balusters. Dimensionally, my sample piece stayed true. I just worried about the strength. I could grab my hand around the baluster and squeeze the 4 mini posts in quite a bit. I have two boys and I could see them body slamming each other into the balusters and breaking them. They are the rowdy type.

I came up with this design where the balusters are kind of the inverse of the newel post. I cut the newel post design on the Bot with a 3/8 endmill and then a roundover bit. The balusters were done simply with a 1/4" ball. I also made the half-round style trim on the newel post with the Bot also. I drew the shape in Autocad and then used the Extruder program to cut the profile with a 1/4" ball.
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