For this project, I decided that it would be poetic if the wood, that came from the trees, was turned back into a tree.  So that’s what I decided to do, CNC a cutout of a tree.

First, I got a tree design from thenounproject.com and set up my CNC file.  After I had set up all of the files with the proper sizes, I cut it out on the Nomad 3 CNC machine.  Cutting out the piece was pretty easy.  Getting the right settings was not.

Because of the remaining pieces of wood being slightly bent, I had to do a lot of tweaking of machine settings it order to both cut through the pieces of wood while also not cutting out the slots meant to hold the wood in place.  There were a lot of wood pieces that did not end up being cut properly.

After I had gotten two cutout pieces that I liked, I cut the slots out using the bandsaw and drill press.  I proceeded to sand the wood and then mixed up some green resin.  I poured the resin into the contour in the wood (such that it looks like leaves).

After that, I let the resin dry and cleaned up my work station.

That was it.  There were no major complications in this project and everything went pretty smoothly.  I am happy with how it turned out.

Cost analysis:

Wood: Home Depot 1” x 3” x 8′ board – $2.50

Epoxy Resin: just a few pumps from each bottle (full bottles around $30 on Amazon) – $1.00

Coloring Dye – Target Cost of a full set $5.99 – Just used a few drops – $1.00

Cup and popsicle stick (for stirring Resin) – can easily find these objects for negligible cost – $0.50

Tools (Sandpaper, CNC machine, etc.) – OEDK access rate of around $15/day x 2 days = $30.00

Labor – $10/hour x 5 hours = $50.00

Total: $85. This turns out to be one of the cheaper projects this semester.  It didn’t take too long and primarily used cheap materials.