Hey Guys!
It's Mike from The Geek Pub!
And after the last episode with the "CNC Fail" a lot of you guys have asked "Is there ever
a place where I would use the CNC to make the workflow in my shop better or easier?"
and the answer is absolutely yes: When you're doing complicated, intricate work!
And so with that I have made a project for my grandson!
This will be for his Christmas present and it is 3D wooden Alphabet blocks, carved out
on the CNC.
So stick around and I'll show you how we did it!
OK!
Well the first thing we're going to do is cut out the blocks!
And I've got this piece of one point five inch by one point five inch poplar and I've
setup a stop block on my tablesaw sled at one point five inches and that will make us
a one point five inch square.
Now after I make these blocks I am going to come back and straighten them up, probably
using the fence or either the sander, I'm not sure.
We'll decide in just a minute.
But the reason why is and it will make more sense when you see it, but we're going to
put these on the X-Carve to cut out each face and we want to make sure that they are the
exact same height no matter which face we put down against the bed of the X-Carve.
And that way we can re-use our home position over and over and over.
And that will make things go much faster!
So let's get started!
OK.
So much like I expected when I measure them with the calipers I get 1.56, 1.52, 1.49,
and so what I am going to do is take the smallest of that dimension, I'm going to set the fence,
and them I'm going to use the Micro-Jig to cut them down to size so that they're all
1.49.
OK.
So I've setup a little jig on the X-Carve and this allows me to add and remove blocks
without have to remove the clamps or work with double sided tape every time, and that
way I know I am going to get my cuts right every single time.
And so basically it works just by sliding the block in and tightening up a couple of
screws.
OK.
So what I am going to do now is paint all of the letters yellow, and once the paint
dries I will hit them with the orbital sander and that will leave it with a really cool
3D look.
So now I am going to take each of the blocks and I am going to run them up against the
orbital sander and this will remove the paint from all of the high areas.
And to finish them off I'm just going to shoot them with some spray lacquer.
This is one of those projects where I feel like the tool was perfect for the job and
I had a lot of fun doing it.
Now you could certainly do this on say for example a scroll saw and just cut the letters
out individually and just simply glue them on top of the blocks, but I don't think that
would be near as fun.
Well hey if you liked this video, I've got another video coming up that will show what
we do with these blocks and you don't want to miss that one, so see you in the next video!