Hi class of EDES 210! Today I will be sharing with you my process for making two individual CNC objects out of wood! While it may sound complicated, I can assure you that it is both easy to learn and use for all sorts of projects!

In the first step we needed to choose an icon or object that we wanted to CNC! I decided to go with an airplane since it was the perfect combination between being visually complex but still simple to machine! Below you can see how it turned out after I attended the training tutorial and learned how to use the larger of the two CNC machines available in the workshop!

The two airplane shapes were perfectly sized for the pieces of wood we were using and were relatively simple to remove from the rest of the wood! Immediately following this, I wanted to make sure that the texture and surface finishing of the shapes were ideal so I decided to use a medium grit sandpaper to smooth any of the edges that were either too sharp or too rough!

After just a little additional work the results were quite amazing and were smooth enough for further painting! I had initially wanted to paint the airplanes blue, but I thought that going with a bronze color would be more unique and different from my previous projects! And so I did!

You can see above that the paint truly emphasizes the wood grain and gives each of the airplanes a reflective glow! To ensure that the finish would stay on the wood, I made sure to add a thin layer of clear coat as a finishing touch on the project!

Here is my cost accounting for this project:

Materials: Two wood pieces cost around $2 each which equals around $4 and spray paint costs $12 (from the Home Depot)

Labor: Project took around 3 hours to complete at a student employment hourly rate of $15

Tools: The CNC machine was provided free of charge but buying one would cost around $1200 and the sandpaper costs around $10 (on Amazon)

In total the project cost around $71

Below is a picture of my workspace after cleaning up!