This past week I used the Carbide Nomad3 CNC machine to cut out figurines of two surfers. I love surfing and thought it’d be fun to have some decorations that I could put around the room. The first thing I did was find which design I wanted to cut out on The Noun Project.com. I found a design with a surfboard and waves which I liked and downloaded it as an SVG.

I imported this into Carbide Create and generated a toolpath based on the size of a piece of wood I selected. I chose to do one pocket cut and one outside cut (later I saw that the outside cut was too close to the edge, so the pocket didn’t show up). I then copied this for the additional surfer, because the assignment required two pieces. This way I could cut both at once and save time.

I generated G-code for this file and imported it into Carbide Motion, where I selected the final settings and began cutting! It took about one hour since I was using a 1/8″ endmill, but everything went smoothly.

Once the pieces came out, I cleaned up the area and began to post-process them. I used sandpaper to make them smooth and then decided on a gold/blue scheme, to honor my Californian roots.

I did this for both, and I had the final product!

Reflection: Overall, this project went well and I didn’t have many hiccups. I did try to do a pocket cut on the part, but due to the contour cut going all the way to the bottom of the wood, it actually didn’t show up. Next time, I would try to make the pocket smaller or have a larger contour offset.

Cost estimate: 

Carbide Nomad3: $2,800

Wood: $15

Time spent: $60 (2 hours @ $30/hr)

Total: $2,875