The Goal:

The goal of this assignment was to work on CNC Milling a design into the surface of wood. I chose a flame and labyrinth shape from The Noun Project, one of my all-time favorite sites for icons and vectors. (Sidenote: I highly recommend other sites on Makerbook for other vector files and resources for various things!)

 

Step 1: Modifiying in Illustrator to get rid of sharp edges

The CNC Machine would not be able to mill the fine details that were smaller than the bit size or points that were too sharp. To deal with this, I modified the vector in illustrator to delete of the text and around the edges by dragging the anchor points with the white arrow, which has a rounding feature in the new Illustrator, making it incredibly easy to modify shapes with just a few clicks.

 

Step 2: Importing Shapes into Easel

After I had the corrected and finalized svg files, I imported these into Easel, a simple website that sort of reminded me of Tinkercad with its simple interface that can fulfill more complex functions than you would think. All that had to be done was set the dimensions of the wood, the bit size, and the depth of the shape you wanted to cut.

These were the overall settings put in for the wood:

Then, I exported the g-code as a .nc file. This contains every part of the toolpath to cut out the shapes and could be viewed by uploading the file into this g-code viewer site.

 

Step 3: CNC MillinG

Using the CNC was fairly straightforward when using Easel to create these 2D cuts. I used a flat ⅛ inch bit and clamped the wood in the appropriate orientation to ensure for the right cut on the poplar wood block.

 

 

Overall, the cut turned out really well and with some slight sanding I was able to remove little bits that were stuck to the wood.

 

Step 4: Post Processing

First, I used a wood stain to color the block a honey brown shade. Initially, I was going to stop there as I liked the neatness of the cut and the simple finish, but while we were working on the chess piece project, I thought it could be cool to try pouring the casting material in the CNC to fill in the holes as a sort of filling into the wood creating a pattern of the casting material in the wood. So, using the leftover black casting material that we had from the chess piece, I filled in the labyrinth and flame.

Later, I decided that it could be cool to experiment more with the coloring since EJ made a cool diffusion swirl pattern when pouring in the dye for our black piece. I picked out the black material that I had previously poured into the flame and then poured in more material that was clear, yellow, and red to fit with the fire theme. I decided to incorporate the marble effect, pouring in red and yellow dye and swirling it a little in the clear mix before pouring it into the engraved fire shape. 

Final Results and Conclusion

Overall, I liked how it turned out and enjoyed the experimental aspect of creating this assignment in testing out different methods to see how things would turn out. Also through this project and the others before, I can clearly say that I appreciate CNC tools like the laser cutter, plasma cutter, 3D printer, and mill which all can cut out such detailed shapes and curves in a relatively easy manner.