In this week’s CNC machining project, I used the Carvey to make Thai giants out of wood. To be able to capture the details of the giant, I used a 1/16in drill bit. 

On my first try, the giant came out great, however, when cutting the outline, I had to terminate the job as the machine started getting super loud and I was worried the drill bit had hit the bottom of the board. However, this wasn’t the case as the wood block wasn’t drilled completely through and had quite a thick amount of wood left. 

On my second attempt, the giant was cut perfectly fine but the outline still had some problems. Not all of the outline was fully cut through, however the layer left was extremely thin so I was able to poke holes in the outline with a screwdriver and pop the piece out of the wood block. 

On my third try, the Carvey still struggled when cutting out the outline. The drill bit got stuck onto the wood piece mid-cut so the process had to be stopped. Since there was only around 1/8in of wood left uncut, I tried drilling holes along the outline with an electric hand drill. This took a lot of time and with 16 holes was still far from being done. This process made me appreciate the Carvey and CNC machines much more as they make drilling much more precise, easy, and quick. 

Cost Analysis: 

Birch Wood Blocks: I used a total of 4 wooden blocks around 5in x 3.5in x 0.75in. A 3/4in thick birch wood panel that is 4ft by 8ft costs $80. This can be cut into 240 wooden blocks. The total cost of wood used is $1.33. 

Machine Cost: Each Thai giant took 18 minutes to cut. A 3-axis milling machine generally costs $40 per hour. As one of the prints failed very early on, the total time to cut all 4 blocks was approximately an hour. So the total machine cost in this project is $40. 

The total cost for CNCing these Thai giants with the Carvey is $41.33.