Sunday November 4th, 2018 was a very special day. I had pressured a couple of friends to sign up for the Intramural Golf Tournament with me a few weeks back, and the day had finally arrived. I woke up at 6:30am sharp only to realize a monsoon was sitting over the area. We were supposed to tee off at 8am, but chances of the tournament actually happening seemed slim. I still decided to head to the course to scope out scene just in case. Although we were delayed an hour or so, the majority of my team miraculously showed up, the rain ceased, and we were ready to compete!

Four and a half hours and nine birdies later, we were crowned the 2018 Rice University Intramural Golf Tournament Champions! The competition was tough, the results were close, but my team prevailed. 

Anyway, I was still riding out the victory into the beginning of this week and decided to dedicate my CNC Machining project to our success on the golf course.

To begin, I found a relatively simple golf design on the Noun Project website.

I then downloaded the SVG file and opened it in Adobe Illustrator. The original design had a text box in the bottom left corner that I was able to remove in Illustrator. Next, I opened Easel on the Inventables website, and imported my SVG.

It was now time to choose my material! I headed over to the ENGI 120 tables and found two similar pieces of the roughly 3.5′ by 4′ pieces of wood. Next, I opened my Easel workspace on the computer connected to the Carvey. I then inputted the proper material as well as its respective dimensions and centered my noun design on the piece. Additionally, I played around with the depths of the different components of the design, making the ball about half as deep as the flag and green outline. My workspace is shown below.

After following the proper steps outlined on the laminated card next to the Carvey, I secured my material to the bed, tightened a standard 1/8′ bit into the drill head, and confirmed all of the information and steps with the program. I chose the 1/8′ bit because we had used it in class for a similarly simple design. Last step was to start the cut and wait!

The carve took less than 10 minutes to complete, and it was truly fun to watch!

My first carve was a success with no complications, so I decided to run my second one directly after. Well, I did vacuum the chamber before running it again to keep the Carvey clean :). Depicted below is my piece directly following the carve.

Once both of my pieces had been carved, it was time to post-process! I decided to use the router along the edges of the wooden blocks to add a slightly more sophisticated look. I chose a flat, diagonal bit to form nice clean slopes on each edge. The top and bottom cuts were relatively easy, but the router did not love shaving perpendicular to the grain of the wood on the side cuts. This left me with a bit of band and hand sanding to do! However, after I got the edges to look as clean as I could, I decided to coat the pieces with beeswax. This finish leaves the wood smooth and shiny, culminating into a sleek final look!

If I were to sell these priceless tokens of victory, a bit of thought and appreciation would factor into the final price. As for time of labor, I probably spent a total of two hours working on this project, charging $5/ hour. I estimated that both pieces of wood probably cost about 1$ together. I used a number of complex machines to complete this project, including the Carvey, the computers in the OEDK, the Router, and the Band Sander. I also used a small amount of the OEDK’s beeswax. As with all of my ENGI 210 projects, to integrate these expenses into my final cost, I have considered the fact that industry average for overhead, consisting of machine rentals, tools, adhesives, etc., is 15% of the finalized materials and labor pricing. Therefore, my resulting calculations set the price of each piece at $6.33. However, I am planning on keeping them for myself to remind me of my win last weekend!

I am already excited for the 2019 tournament. Maybe I will mill another victory piece out of possibly metal next fall if we get the W again and if my machine expertise continues to expand!

That being said, I really enjoyed learning about the Carvey and experimenting with the Easel software. It is incredibly user-friendly and a blast to use! I look forward to using it again for the final!