Not many people will get the reference, but, if you’re one of the few who does, I want you to know you’re awesome. That being said, I absolutely enjoyed CNC machining more than any other project we’ve completed in this class. I’ve always wanted to learn how to be better at setting up G-Code and running a CNC, and this project certainly helped me do so. Here’s what I made:

Level 1: Finding a Symbol

I had the bright idea of making the Protoss symbol from Starcraft, seen here:

Getting all of those contours and features would have been amazing, but would have exacerbated an already steep-ish learning curve. I thus dumbed it down and went with this symbol, found on Noun Project:

My only regret here is that I didn’t capture the blue lines on the right of the symbol, as those would have been neat to paint. In any case, I took this symbol to Carbide Create and made my G-Code!

Level 2: Generating Toolpaths

In this case, I only needed to make 2D vector toolpaths, which was relatively simple. I opted to pocket out the outline of the entire shape and to further pocket out the inner dimensions of the two shapes in the symbol (the big weird one and the little circle). I then decided to cut out the outline of the shape. This caused some issues when dealing with both of the two shapes, so I needed to modify the outline manually to not include the dot, forming a straight edge at that point. With this, I sent it to the Nomad to cut!

Level 3: Nomad Milling

Cutting went mostly without issue. I made sure to use tabs and a wasteboard to avoid cutting into the bed of the machine. Unfortunately, my first cut got messed up part-way, forcing me to stop here:

I didn’t want to waste the stock, so I simply set my initial overall pocket to go deeper and adjusted every other toolpath accordingly. This worked well, but ultimately gave me two shapes of differing thicknesses, the only aspect of my two parts which remains unidentical. In any case, both the second attempt of the first part and the first attempt of the second part went well, producing two well-defined shapes. All that was left was to paint and post-process!

Level 4: Post-Processing

I elected to paint my pieces yellow to mimic the gold of the original symbol. After some light sanding to get rid of any CNC artifacts, I applied a nice, even coat of paint and left it to dry on a paper towel. This was a big mistake, as the paint stuck and the part ended up with flecks of paper towel in it. I thus had to sand it down again and start over, this time painting only one side at a time and leaving ample time (days, even) to air-dry. Finally, I had a beautiful CNC-produced part, which can be seen below!

Cost Estimate

~6″x4″ 0.25″ wood at $0.029/sq.in: $0.69
~2 oz Rust-Oleum Yellow Paint+Primer at $0.65/oz: $1.30
~4 hour labor at $15/hr: $60

Total Cost: $61.99