Natural progression for me. I've been a maker most of my life, mostly in wood, although my day job is as a computer programmer, so moving on to a CNC was not such a big step. The difference was that I generally use 8x4 sheets of plywood so a desktop CNC was just not going to cut it (pun intended) and I went for a 4x4 machine that I could buy in the UK as I didn't want the additional cost of shipping, customs duty & VAT by buying from the States. I've since upgraded that resulting in a better machine which has included prototyping parts in wood. Now I want to make those parts in Aluminium and as you say in your video, working in sheet aly is not something that has a lot of videos. Your latest video was well timed. Many thanks, I look forward to more from the CNC Den.
@@tetleyk Sounds good! I hear you on the size, I was hoping to squeeze a 1m x 1m bed in here with the machine I have, sadly the only space I had for it, after selling a table saw to fit it in, was just under. I only have part of the unit for fabrication. Enjoy the aluminium, a few of my prior videos cover a lot of that, including some useful tips.
I was an intarsia artist and wholesaled my art to gift and art shops and did art and craft shows. did it all by Scroll Saw and Sanders. It wore me out then I found out about CNC routers. I built a small 2'x3' machine and used it to carve out my intarsia pieces. They came out perfect, no way I could do that good by hand with the time it took the machine to do it. Unfortunately, COVID-19 happened and I stopped doing it, now I'm trying to get back into using the CNC for doing some work again. Bought a workbee cnc router to see If I can get back into it. One thing I have to learn is to cut each inlayed piece out like a puzzle with the CNC router. I was thinking of a laser but it would leave a burn mark on the edges. Each piece is about 3/4 of an inch thick. So if you have any hints on how best I go about it I'm all ears.
@@grahamshere A technique now I see it, I did not know the name of. It's a shame you didn't keep it going during that perriod as chances are, it would have sold well then. In comparison to a lot of other CNC work, it still holds value due to less doing it. I suspect at that thickness, many lasers would have struggled, without causing more than just charred edges. You probably know more than me on the technique, my guess is the largest part of your time is sorting out that jigsaw. Once you have the templates you can recreate them over and over and still maintain some individuality in each, due to the wood variations. Some software does this automatically, I'm guessing working around knots and other imperfections means there is always an element of manual interventions each time. You could try AI for the initial drawing ideas too, they may creates some things you'd never have thought of.
@@grahamshere Further thought, if you're selling on etsy, don't list them with low number of availability unless you intend them to be one offs. Etsy apparently favours sellers who have plenty of stock. So if you can say you have a 20, 50 or 10 knowing you can remake them over and over on the CNC, list them that way.
How did you get into CNC?
Natural progression for me. I've been a maker most of my life, mostly in wood, although my day job is as a computer programmer, so moving on to a CNC was not such a big step.
The difference was that I generally use 8x4 sheets of plywood so a desktop CNC was just not going to cut it (pun intended) and I went for a 4x4 machine that I could buy in the UK as I didn't want the additional cost of shipping, customs duty & VAT by buying from the States. I've since upgraded that resulting in a better machine which has included prototyping parts in wood. Now I want to make those parts in Aluminium and as you say in your video, working in sheet aly is not something that has a lot of videos. Your latest video was well timed.
Many thanks, I look forward to more from the CNC Den.
@@tetleyk Sounds good! I hear you on the size, I was hoping to squeeze a 1m x 1m bed in here with the machine I have, sadly the only space I had for it, after selling a table saw to fit it in, was just under. I only have part of the unit for fabrication. Enjoy the aluminium, a few of my prior videos cover a lot of that, including some useful tips.
I was an intarsia artist and wholesaled my art to gift and art shops and did art and craft shows. did it all by Scroll Saw and Sanders. It wore me out then I found out about CNC routers. I built a small 2'x3' machine and used it to carve out my intarsia pieces. They came out perfect, no way I could do that good by hand with the time it took the machine to do it. Unfortunately, COVID-19 happened and I stopped doing it, now I'm trying to get back into using the CNC for doing some work again. Bought a workbee cnc router to see If I can get back into it. One thing I have to learn is to cut each inlayed piece out like a puzzle with the CNC router. I was thinking of a laser but it would leave a burn mark on the edges. Each piece is about 3/4 of an inch thick. So if you have any hints on how best I go about it I'm all ears.
@@grahamshere A technique now I see it, I did not know the name of. It's a shame you didn't keep it going during that perriod as chances are, it would have sold well then. In comparison to a lot of other CNC work, it still holds value due to less doing it.
I suspect at that thickness, many lasers would have struggled, without causing more than just charred edges.
You probably know more than me on the technique, my guess is the largest part of your time is sorting out that jigsaw. Once you have the templates you can recreate them over and over and still maintain some individuality in each, due to the wood variations. Some software does this automatically, I'm guessing working around knots and other imperfections means there is always an element of manual interventions each time.
You could try AI for the initial drawing ideas too, they may creates some things you'd never have thought of.
@@grahamshere Further thought, if you're selling on etsy, don't list them with low number of availability unless you intend them to be one offs. Etsy apparently favours sellers who have plenty of stock. So if you can say you have a 20, 50 or 10 knowing you can remake them over and over on the CNC, list them that way.