As it’s almost the holiday season I decided to pick a festive design. I set off to see what was available in the noun project and my first couple of design picks were too complicated, and failed the simulation every time I tried to format them on carbide create. After several design changes and a successful simulation, I settled on a festive snow globe.

I then grabbed my wood and set off to cut it using the Nomad CNC Mill. I placed my wood in the CNC secured it and then proceeded to calibrate it. I realized when looking at my design that it wouldn’t fit vertically into the piece of wood, so I rotated it 90 degrees.

I cut my first piece with no issues and then set off to cut my second. This one had slightly more issues as the wood was of worse quality, and instead of being removed just as dust the wood came off in a combination of dust and ribbons. Therefore, there were more defects on the second cut than the first.

I then decided to try a third cut but the wood also had issues cutting and the pocket were much deeper than the first two cuts; I might have accidently made changes to the file when I checked it before cutting, as this was on a different day than the first two. So I decided to see if I could post-process out most of defects of the second cut, as it most closely matched the first piece I cut.

After a lot of sanding and elbow grease I was able to remove the defects from the second cut and polish up the first one. Once the pieces were all smooth from sanding, I decided to finish them off with a bit of wood wax to give them a nice glossy finish.

My two main takeaways from this project are to be aware of the limitations that your CNC has when picking complex designs, and that the wood quality has a major impact on how easy it is post process your cuts.

Cleaned up final workspace:

Cost Type	Cost	Price	Source	Quantity	Total
Materials	3×1 plank	$2.39/8ft	lowes	9in	$0.22
	Wood wax	$9.98/16oz	Home Depot	1oz	$1.00
	Sand Paper	$10.39/25 peieces	Home Depot	2.5 peices	$1.04
Labor	Woodworker	$21/hr	Ziprecruiter	5 hrs	$105
	Prototyping Engineer (You!)	$36/hr	Ziprecruiter	5 hrs	$180
Overhead	Facility Cost (Machine Time)	$40/month	Makers Barn	2hrs	$1
Total for a Prototyped Piece	$61.09
Total for a Piece	$36.09

For both pieces I used the amount of time it took me on average to work on each of the three pieces as the basis for the labor time. Despite this inflated labor time for a skilled worker it would still be much cheaper for them to produce a piece than for me. However, if we assume more efficiency, due to skill, with 40 minutes for cutting time and 15 minutes for sanding each piece would be much cheaper at $20.34. This reaffirms the importance of skilled labor in manufacturing as both a way to cut costs and time.