so a few months ago I got a 4x8 Laguna CNC machine for the shop and since then
I'd been having so much fun learning the world of CNC learning its abilities and
creating so many fun projects on it so in this video I want to go over a little
bit about my experience you know as a new CNC operator and also seven
different projects that I've created on it
the CNC shows up on a truck all preassembled and wrapped up tight I
didn't have to run a piece of equipment to get it off the bed and man it was
pretty intense watching my brand-new machine just creeping slowly through the
air to get to the port but it made it there Safeway where I am packaged
everything that I could before picking it up once again and moving it to a
corner of my shop now I've been using a smaller iconic C&C for the past two
years and while it's been great I want to cut more than what the size will
allow and that's what got me looking into 4x8 I went with the Laguna Swift
model this is a vacuum bed meaning you can put the bed under suction and hold
the material in place it's amazing to have the capacity to throw an entire
sheet of plywood or even 8-foot dimensional lumber on the bed and then
just let it cut now for those of you concerned that my videos will be
changing because of this addition don't be I've still plan to make videos
building things by hand like I always have but when I come into a project that
I either want to repeat or make a template for or I have an idea but it
would simply take way too long do by hand that's when I'll turn to the
machine the very first thing I decided to make was a simple shop stool at the
time the side of my shop was extremely bare
so I spent 20 minutes quickly modeling up some things since I know Sketchup so
well I pretty much do all of my modeling there to start you could do it and one
of the other modeling softwares though or even in the-- carves itself once the
parts are as I want them I move and rotate them so that they're on the same
plane I choose a standard camera setting to give me a direct top-down perspective
to the parts then turn on parallel projections under the camera setting in
this setting instead of all the points disappearing to one point on the horizon
they're just nice and parallel in both 2d and 3d which gives you a nice flat
image 2x for now I can export it as a 2d graphic
and choose the dot DXF file type next I can open up that DX F and V color route
the tool path for it and then cut it out
and then just like that I have a very simple but functional stool I really
feel like C and C's are a modern-day printer for thought it was exciting and
crazy to me as I assembled and sat on this first stool of mine that my pie was
actually sitting on something tangible that was only a mere thought half an
hour before you can see I was so excited I didn't even bother going to a ground
to do the assembly work I just sat right there on the bed the next tool was a
much taller design to populate seating over my woodworking shop I actually have
a video showing how to do these without a CNC if you're interested I made one of
these by hand and then use the CNC to thatch out the rest quickly then the
third stool design I did when Christmas rolled around there was gonna be 14
nieces and nephews at Christmas so I could have stole for each child and also
cut in their first initial onto the top I did leave them raw but then I took a
bunch of paint and everybody in old clothes spent the afternoon in the yard
with the kids hoping to paint their stools it was a
huge hit so if you have an event coming up with some young'uns involved don't
forget to download the debride DXF and take a unique gift the next project is a
plywood deadblow mallet because why not I made this from quality Baltic birch
and I only had half inch on hand so I made multiples of the parts to stick
together and build up the thickness of the mallet oh and to show you how well
the vacuum on the table works this is Robert trying with all of his weight to
move the sheet after laying it down and turning the table on then you can also
see how well the vacuum holds these parts into place while they're being cut
on these the holes were placed to act as locators and keep these parts in line
with one another as they were being assembled then a pocket is cut in on the
head so I have a void to place bb's in and therefore making it a dead blow
mallet I used type on original on the different layers smush them together and
then inserted a dowel into place then I flipped it over and before
attaching the other side the same way I filled the pocket with bb's after
setting those up in some Bessie quick clamps to dry I did all of the final
sanding and rounding over by hand as you can see the mallets have gotten a little
more complex with Tech's on both sides I love this project so much I actually
turned it into a branded product so if you would like one there is a link for
you down below project number three is a bottle cap display in the shape of all
50 states it's a simple project where a person can collect bottle caps from
different beers and then have a way to put them on display sometimes moving
around a full sheet apply is difficult but I found that by placing my stock of
sheet Goods at the end of my CNC I can simply slide a new sheet off the stack
and onto the bed I also always check to see if there is a slight cup in the
material as I'm laying it down if so I make sure to place it so that the cup is
facing down since sheets typically have a prettier front than back when I do
this I make sure to take my designs and reverse the image and V carve before
cutting them out when doing something like this job I first go through and cut
all of those inside pockets throughout the entire sheet then I come back and
cut the profile also on jobs like this even though I have a vacuum table I
typically go ahead and add tabs to the pieces because every hole like cut in
allows air to escape therefore reducing the effectiveness of the vacuum table oh
and here on the Michigan you can see a dark line running through the veneer on
the backside this is just an example on why reversing the image is helpful then
here you can see a little bit better that the holes have a unique shape to
them they aren't actually perfectly round by having a hole that has about
four grab points it allows the caps to have you know small variation in size
but still be compressed into the state they can simply be pushed in from the
back by hand or the cap can be set down and then the state can be pushed in over
it favorite zegen but good old Texas beer
if you get one don't try to fill it up in a single day unless you have a party
then that's acceptable all right let's talk about dust collection for a second
and a few modifications I've done to improve things
so first off I'm using the Laguna Sea flux dust collector which has this
really awesome foot pedal to raise and lower the collection canister it has
three intake ports where originally I only used one to run over to the spindle
but I also wanted to use the collector to clean off the bed after each project
to do this I first added in a blast gate to the spindle line then I added in
another blast gate to the second port where I bought an attached another four
inch flex hose that I could then run over to a Rockler shop-vac attachment I
think Rockler specifically designed us to clean up large area such as floors so
it works perfectly to clean up the entire C&C bed quickly
I threw two hangers on the wall to store it off the ground and so that it would
be close to the work area now I can close the vac off to the spindle and
directl it only to this attachment and then very quickly go over the entire bed
before laying down a new sheet of plywood this ensures that nothing is
left behind to get under the material which of course would throw off all my
cuts all right now on the project for if you've been around for a while then you
might remember that my neighbors have a lot of chickens in fact I felt them a
massive chicken coop if you don't know fresh farm eggs actually don't have to
be refrigerated with that I made a countertop egg holder to hold a full two
dozen eggs this one cracks hanging out because of
how cute it is but better than just being cute it's also functional after
designing it and Sketchup then exporting it to be carved I cut it out another tip
for you on useful things to have around the machine one is an extension cord
I personally installed a cord reel that can be pulled out to use and then
retracted when done and even though you can play with feed rates and rpms to get
a nice cut I still run over the parts quickly with my palm ara s before
removing them then when I use tabs I use my multi-tool
now and just a tip whenever you're placing your tabs pick spots on the part
that are nice and flat so that you can cut them off flush and then that cuts
down post-production cleanup work on my first batch of chickens it's a double
sided design meant for sitting on the countertop you can see that I did a slot
design where after painting each tray it could slip right around the body of the
chicken and rest on two support pieces my mom died when she saw them but said
that she didn't have enough countertop room for one and would need one that
hung in a wall instead with that the one sided egg holder was born since the
slaughters out of the question you know with it not having a back this one has a
mortise and tenon design where the trays fit very snugly and the slots on the
body of the chicken since they are such a good fit I made sure to tape them off
before painting this one might be if you can't tell I'm kind of in love with the
egg holder let's switch off the wood for just a second with project five my main
goal with the CNC is to do more production work behind the scenes either
outside of my videos or in conjunction with them an example of that is whenever
I built a porch swing I made a video building it by hand and showing viewers
how but now I also sell templates for people who are interested in speeding up
the making process of their own swing I personally think the making of these
templates is so interesting I first lay down a sheet of masonite but really any
flat sheet will do then I lay on top of that a sheet of styrene which is just a
plastic material now the cool part is I switch out the bit to something called a
drag knife honestly it looks just like a small exacto knife and when it runs the
spindle doesn't turn like it does with every other bed so instead of spinning
and moving through the material to cut it simply drags the blade along the tool
path you take and rotates the blades so that it's
always in a cutting direction another thing instead of cutting all the way
through the material it just Pierce's it so that whenever a full sheet is done
you have to go through and bend slash tear them out it carefully it's my deal
because the material can stray and tear in the wrong place it helps to first
Bend the piece end along the cut and then run your hand or nail along it to
guide that tear this is a really great material for making templates for
projects that have a really unique shape in them they can be set directly on a
piece of material traced but then set aside until they're needed again
all right project number six and it's back to wood making a growth chart ruler
now everything I've cut up to this point has been from sheet material when I was
figuring out how to make these I decided to make a jig to hold one by aids on the
bed of my machine I started off with the sheet of eighth inch plywood then cut
down some 3/4 inch plywood scraps to different links and attached it using
tight bond to I would set up one by eight in place use the square to make
sure it is sitting there at a 90 and then block it in on the other side with
another scrap and total was able to fit 6 1 by 8 I transported the jig over to
my CNC and lined it up on to the bed of course dimensional lumber is not all
exactly the same size so once in place I used some wedge material to fill in the
small gaps if they wiggled around making sure to dress the board off to the left
of the space I made sure to keep these wedges short so they wouldn't interfere
with a spindle or bit now I could start the cut and watches all six boards would
be cut at the same time I have a special fondness for these rulers because I've
made over a hundred of these by hand when I first got into building these are
actually what I made and sold to buy all my first tools and materials for the
first year of my projects so if you want to make one yes of course the CNC makes
it quicker but you can very easily do it with the router as well in fact I have a
video already showing you how to go that route if you're interested ok last but
not least because it's my personal favorite
project seven is a variety of shop charts this
started off by me making a fraction to decimal conversion chart because getting
into C and C you use decimals over fractions and I got tired of always
googling the conversions although a tip for you if you work in V car if you only
know the fraction you can type that in then hit the equal key and it will
convert it for you anyways I made this chart to hang up by my CNC for quick
reference and then it just snowballs and I got carried away with making many
others that would be hopeful or just fun to have around my second one was a tap
and drill size chart because even though I have one hanging on my shop bridge it
is freaking tiny you have to get this close to it to read and I ain't got time
for that but I do have a machine to where I can make my own size chart that
I can read at a glance for all of the charts I'm using a wide variety of B
bits and honestly there is a huge learning curve on these because
depending on the material and the size of font determines what bit to use and
how fast you can run it I started off with a ton of blow out and how to do a
lot of tests before diving into a new chart to determine the speed and also
the depth to get the best results my favorite chart is more of a just a
fun one it is a custom djenka scale if you're not familiar with djenka is the
hardness scale for woods the only problem is most charts out there have
woods that i've never heard of much less use so I created my own list of species
that I thought the average woodworker would find useful now on the release you
saw that I just spray-painted it and then sanded off the overspray on these I
tried a different method they do make products that you can first paint your
piece of material then mask it off before cutting in your engravings I
tried two different products while prototyping these charts and honestly I
didn't have much success with either so instead of messing with it I would cut
the charts spray paint the engravings then using a foam roller come back and
paint the background and this actually came away with great-looking results
then it just left the difficult job of figuring out a good looking but legible
color scheme I know I'll get a lot of comments because of the big controversy
around C and C's you know whether you consider it real woodworking or not it
is most definitely within the niche of making and that is where my passion lies
so I'm having a blast with it and there's so much to learn and I cannot
wait to explore it further now if you're looking for an at-home resource to learn
C and C then I recommend this book which is CNC router essentials other than that
I hope that you enjoyed this one I know it is longer than normal but hopefully
it came away with some good ideas I'll see on my next project guys I want to
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