A quick preview

Here is a sneak peak at the finished product! Keep reading for the entire process.

THE LAST ONE

This is it guys! This is officially my last blog post of the semester! Since you last saw me, I have been learning how to use the CNC mill to create 2.5 D objects. A 2.5 D object is a three dimensional object created by extruding a two dimensional object by a depth. You can get pretty cool objects with this process alone, so let’s dive right into my latest project.

STARTING WITH A SKETCH

I know you all were disappointed that 3D printing didn’t involve any sketches, so I’m bring the sketch back here, baby. My noun of choice this time around is an origami crane. I needed two versions of my sketch for CNC milling. The first was the version where the entire shape would be carved out to a depth (this is called clearing out a pocket) and the other was the border that along which needed to be cut out all the way through. And here are both sketches:

TO JACKSON POLLOCK: MY PAINTING DOES COME FROM EASEL

With my two sketches ready to go, I imported both sketches as SVGs into Easel. Easel is a software that allows you to set the depths of two dimensional shapes into a material then generates the g-code that the CNC milling machine actually runs on. In the image below, you can see me setting the head of the crane to be cleared out as a pocket at a depth of 0.375 in. In the upper right corner, I had to set the exact dimensions of the wood I cut as well as the drill bit I used.

BROKEN WINGS LEARN TO FLY

With my crane set up, it was time to carve! I ended up using a 1/16 in drill bit to clear out the pockets, then I paused the carve and swapped to a longer 1/8 in drill bit to cut all the way through around the border. Here is the CNC mill in action:

Unfortunately, getting a crane cut out all the way was no easy task. My first mistake was trying to make my crane too large on my wood. This made the cut along the border run off the piece of wood. When the drill bit got too close to cutting all the way through, the entire block just shattered.

My second attempt and third attempts came out of the CNC mill just fine. But the CNC mill automatically adds tabs on cuts all the way through to hold the wood together.

I tried removing these tabs first by using a pair of wire cutters and then by using a box cutter. Both processes broke the thin delicate wing of the crane.

My fourth attempt failed as well. The 1/8 in drill bit hit a weird knot in the piece of wood and shattered.

Finally, attempts five and six came out clean, and using a Dremel with a blade removed the tabs without breaking the delicate wing!

SANDING, STAINING, AND VARNISHING, OH MY!

With all the craziness of removing the crane from the block of wood, post-processing was a relatively straight forward process. Both Not Broken Bird 5 and Not Broken Bird 6 were sanded down with 240 grit and 600 grit sandpaper to clean up the rough edges then stained with mahogany stain, sanded again, and varnished with polyurethane gloss. Here are the cranes both after sanding and as the final product!

OUR budget for this semester was very broke DOLLARS

It’s time to crunch those numbers one last time to see just how broke this semester would have made me without OEDK access and materials being free. Shoutout to the OEDK here for encouraging student exploration! So let’s see how expensive these two cranes were (not factoring in all their broken friends).

That’s about $60 per bird, which is pretty expensive for a ¢22 piece of cedar. But such is the life of an artist giving value to raw materials.

And that’s all she wrote, guys. My crazy ENGI 210 blogging journey has finally come to a close. I certainly have enjoyed this wild ride of a learning experience, and I have some pretty cool souvenirs (if I do say so myself). I’m signing off for the last time, and I hope to catch you again at the OEDK some time. Au revoir!