For this week’s assignment, we were tasked to carve two nouns of our choosing into wood using the OEDK’s Carvey CNC Machine.

To begin, I browsed through different noun SVG shapefiles on TheNounProject.com until I eventually decided to download an optical illusion in the shape of a triangle.

I acknowledge that some may argue that this design did not constitute a legitimate “noun” but the shape had simple, straight lines that the CNC machine could easily carve and I deduced that the design could definitely be classified as a “thing” and could thus be considered a noun.

With the SVG file downloaded, I then used Adobe Illustrator to remove the watermark attached to the shape and correctly scaled it to an appropriate size for the CNC machine. The next steps included creating an Easel account on Inventables.com and importing the modified design into that software. Furthermore, I measured and entered the dimensions of the wood I sought to machine into the software and prepared the CNC machine to print by inserting a 1/16″ drill bit, a drill bit fan, and the fasteners needed to secure the wood in the machine. To save time, I decided to carve my design in two locations on one piece of wood and used a saw after the machining to separate the two designs.

All in all, it took about 30 minutes for the CNC machine to carve out my designs. That time, combined with the hour I spent preparing the file online and the 30 minutes of spent preparing and later post-processing the wood, required 2 hours to complete the project. At a minimum wage of ~$7.50, the labor costs come out at $15. The 40 square-inch piece of 3/4-inch thick wood, according to the $14 price for 360 square inches I found online, resulted in $1.56 being spent for materials. Therefore, since the CNC machine and saw was free for me to use, the total cost associated with this project came out to $16.56.

My number for peer grading was 23 while I peer graded numbers 24 and 28.