Daily Bench Shot

[Robin Dobbie]

Got a new toy last week and spent a bit of time learning the basics of how to use it for internal and external cuts as well as pocketing and a little bit of engraving.  

Quick and dirty bit of cutting in MDF and it pockets together very, very smoothly. Need about 100 more hours to practice so I can find new and more clever ways to make minor mistakes. But I think this is going to be a VERY, VERY useful tool for prototyping parts and making templates. Need to starting thinking differently about how project parts could be made and assembled.

Also, blew my budget for new equipment for probably the next 1-1/2 years...

Which one did you get? Casually considering building one, myself. Actually why I subscribed to Woodsmith, last year was the article on how to build one. Whatever I do is way off in the future.

[justdraftn]

Must have several hours on that one.

Not too bad.  2-3hr sessions one day.
1-2hr session second day.
Couple of hours of fine sanding to fit the tenons.
Actually very relaxing.

[Rob Young]

Which one did you get? Casually considering building one, myself. Actually why I subscribed to Woodsmith, last year was the article on how to build one. Whatever I do is way off in the future.

Shaper Origin.

[stav]

Not too bad.  2-3hr sessions one day.
1-2hr session second day.
Couple of hours of fine sanding to fit the tenons.
Actually very relaxing.

So when one of these machines is doing its work, do you need to supervise or do you just hit print and let it go?

[justdraftn]

So when one of these machines is doing its work, do you need to supervise or do you just hit print and let it go?

You have me mixed up w/another post.

All my work is done by hand.

[Rob Young]

So when one of these machines is doing its work, do you need to supervise or do you just hit print and let it go?

In case you were asking about the Shaper Origin. No, it is not a gantry style CNC. You provide the gross movements, it handles the fine movements. Essentially you have an infinitely large area in which to work.

[®smpr_fi_mac®]

A small jewelry box of sapele. Drawer fronts will be curly maple.

[jstraw]

Cut the miters today on a couple of tea boxes for a fundraiser. One had a kumiko top, the other is a cherry lid from the fire wood pile. Next is some sanding and pre-finishing before glue-up and cutting off the top.

[Rob Young]

Continuing to "play" (i.e. experiment) with the Shaper Origin handheld CNC...

To make things easier on me, I picked up some pre-dimensioned poplar from the Home Despot. Then fed said dimensions into the on-board box joint widget on the Shaper Origin. And out came a tool path for making a quick and dirty box. And dang if it didn't press-fit together! One of the parameters in the widget is "glue gap". The default is 0.005". I pushed it out to 0.006" after a quick test. Probably could be 0.007" or 0.008" after a test fit of all four sides. Really, it seems to be a function of runout, actual bit size and material. But this will glue up just fine.

Pretty darn amazing right off the tool. The material I tested with tonight measured just smack on at 0.5" so I told the Shaper to make the final pass at 0.51" depth. That should amount to 0.01" of protrusion. Test fit shows it to be just proud. Too lazy to go find feeler gauge, but certainly withing sanding range. 

Clever little gadget to be sure.  One of the coolest features I've found so far is how you can enter dimensions. In this case, 1/32" shy of 5-1/2" so I entered the width as 5.5-1/32 it it handled the computation of equal fingers just fine. Very natural.

As with most "hand tool" vs. "machine" comparisons, if one had a full blown gantry style CNC with the necessary alterations to allow this sort of machining, the automatic CNC would win in the end. It takes time to set up and run the 4 passes manually for each joint edge. But for one-off type projects I feel this technology has an edge. No g-code to fuss with. No programming or calculating. Everything is done in-machine.  Really very clever and long-term I can see the developers modifying this for dovetail type joints. 

   

   

[fishhh4]

I don't know if I could do that much Scroll work... Probably go buggier.

   Bath is moving along. 
Going to be doing that Ekopel on the tub in the morning.
meanwhile last coat on the doors...




Pretty good veiw from the crapper.


Small panel comes down to counter higth on right side. It's upside down.