Hello guys, today I will be talking about my latest prototyping project, in which we had to use the CNC machine in order to make two copies of a noun of our choice. This would be done on a wooden block. I used the Nomad CNC machine.

The first step was to choose a noun from the Noun Project. I ended up choosing a baseball and modified it slightly by shifting the baseball to the right of the outer circle so that I could mimic its motion on the field of play where it is being thrown. I did this through Carbide Create and used a 1/8” bit for the CNC machine.

Next, while deciding the plan for the baseball, I decided to make the pockets first on the CNC machine and then go through and contour, or cut out, the outer edges. There were 6 pockets in total (3 per baseball) and then the overall contour.

I started by putting in the dimensions of my wooden block and then taped the wood to the base of the Nomad. Next, I probed the machine and put in the 1/8” bit.

Then, after jogging and aligning the machine, it was time to start cutting. The machine began cutting and everything was running smoothly. There was an estimated cut time of 35 minutes, and the majority of it would be spent on the contour as it would have to remove wood a layer at a time. However, when the cut was about 95% complete, some problems started happening. Even though I had been vacuuming the surface every 5 minutes or so, the tape had slowly come undone throughout the contouring portion and the block began to move slightly. Because of this, the right side of one of the baseballs got slightly chipped. While I was disappointed that this happened, I didn’t want to start over since it was not nearly bad enough for me to waste more materials to redo it. At about 99%, the block jerked a bit on the other baseball while contouring, causing there to be a divet in the other baseball on the bottom side. Once again, it was unfortunate that this happened but the print only had less than a minute to go so I paused the machine and let it run through smoothly.

From this experience towards the end of the print, I learned a lot of valuable things. Perhaps I could have done a better job in taping the bottom of the wood to the machine, or I could have also slowed down the rate at which the machine worked. Slowing down the machine’s rate would have caused this print to go over my reserved machine time, so next time I should look to tape the wood better and run the machine at a slower rate.

However, I kept the part that I had made and moved on to post-processing. I wanted to give the baseballs a nice finish without adding a stain as that would take away from the color of the wood itself. I applied a coat of boiled linseed oil as it would give it a smooth finish and make my baseballs look shiny.

I definitely enjoyed this project and learned a lot from it. The CNC machine has a lot of quirks but it is a super satisfying machine to operate and watch work. While my final product has a couple of blemishes, I still believe I learned a lot about the intricacies of how to operate this machine and what changes to make next time in order to get an even better product. Thank you all for reading!

Material	Cost	Source	Quantity	Total
Wood Blocks	$21.49/4 blocks	Wood Blocks	1 block	$5.37
Boiled Linseed Oil	13.72/can	Boiled Linseed Oil	1/10 can	$1.37
CNC Operator	$25.08/hr	CNC Operator	2 hours	$50.16
Overhead	14 cents/kWh	Overhead	0.25 kWh	$0.03
Design	Free	Noun Project		$0
Total				$56.93