For this project I chose brain as my noun. After downloading the vector file as .svg and removing the author text in Illiustator, I uploaded the design to Easel.

My initial plan was to make the entire head and face be cut to depth, but I realized that this would likely take an obscene amount of time, so I adjusted it to an outline. I also wanted the lines around the head to be cut to a lower depth than the head, so I split the file accordingly and previewed the g-code after setting my desired depths of 3/8″ for the lines, and 1/8″ for the head.

I then mounted my piece of wood into the carvey using the corner clamp and a bar clamp. I inserted the bit which was 1/8″ for the lines and 1/16″ for the head and followed some on screen pre-checks before hitting go.

while the cut came out well, in places where very small islands of material were left, it sheared off a few layers of the MDF board. If I were to have a second chance at choosing stack wood, I would not choose MDF for this reason.

After both pieces were cut, I used an knife to shave off the burrs of wood around the edges and then I painted it with black and blue acrylic paint. As can be seen, the issue with islands of wood shearing off forced me to make the pieces slightly different.

Overall these pieces took about 4 hours to make which costs $80 for my time. in total they took an hour on the Carvey. Based on a helpful but admittedly questionably dependable source, the operating cost of the router should be around $5/hr so for 1 hr it would be $5. based on home depot’s MDF price of 0.0066¢/in^2, the cost of wood is about 78¢ for the 120 in^2 I used.  I am ignoring the cost of paint because I didn’t use a significant portion of either bottle. This brings the total cost to $85.78.

https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-running-wood-cutting-CNC-cost-per-hour

https://www.homedepot.com/p/3-4-in-x-4-ft-x-8-ft-MDF-Panel-D11612490970000/304325742