5 Awesome Projects/Gifts for your CNC Router and How to Make Them

[Music] dr d flow hey what's up guys it's dr d flow and today we're going to go over my five favorite projects to make on my cnc router to gift or to even sell to others as you can probably tell these projects will use a wide range of raw materials from wood and engineered plastics to even aluminum but what kind of machine can handle all these different materials and still be affordable enough for a hobbyist like myself to have in his or her garage well that would be the lead cnc machine provided by this video's sponsor open builds now lead refers to the fact that this machine uses a lead screw in order to move the carriages on all the axes now this in combination with these thick aluminum extrusion rails means that this machine is much more rigid than other machines in its price range now i'm going to go into more of the specifications for this machine as well as some of the really cool accessories open build sent out but let's go ahead and jump into our first project which is a cutting board [Music] the cutting board is my favorite gift to give to friends and family because it's easy to make but at the same time there's a subtle complexity to it with these light accents in this personalized inlay you can obviously use any wood of your choosing my favorite combination of light and dark woods are maple and walnut i have two sizes of dimensioned wood right here these thicker pieces are 16 inches long by one and a half inches wide and three quarters of an inch thick these thinner strips are the same dimensions but only 1 8 inch thick i stand it along the sides and now i can glue them all together in this pattern so i'm just coating one side with glue and i want to make sure that i get it all the way to the edges because that is where a delamination will most likely occur is at the ends and the edges now for making cutting boards nice clamps are very underrated they'll make or break this seal just putting some slight downward pressure just to make sure the board doesn't rise up so it's been about 16 hours and it's very unlikely that once i unclamp this board that's going to come out perfectly straight unfortunately when working with wood flatness requires two distinct machines a joiner and a planer neither which i have in my garage shop my solution to this problem is to use the cnc router to take off just a little bit of material from the top and bottom of the board the cnc router square so the board will come out flat let's head over to the router to take off that top layer now because we need full access to the top of the board we can't clamp the top so i 3d printed these toe clamps i love 3d printing work holding devices especially for the router because one they're cheap and two if i nick them with the end mill the end mill is not going to break so it's secured by this right angle 3d printed piece and then i just tighten this central bolt in the toe clamps and it's going to press down on the board over time due to vibrations and other factors the board can lift up out of the work holding for that reason i like to use a down cut bit as its name implies it forces the chips downwards which is not great for surface finish but it does keep the board in place plus i'm going to sand this uh after we're done so i'm not really worried about surface finish at this point we can click start this is my manual override for the spindle [Music] so this is all finished just need to flip it around now [Music] that machine side sits super flat now it's a good sign just going to re-zero it since it's a little bit thinner now with that all finished next we need to make the pocket for the inlay this will be in the shape of a cursive f the trickiest part about inlays is that you must remember the sharpest point in your design can't be smaller than the radius of your end mill i'm going to use a 1 16 inch end mill so my sharpest corner can only have a radius of 1 32 of an inch if you don't take this into consideration then your inlay may not fit or there won't be a seamless transition between the base material and the inlay as you can tell i use fusion 360 to make my models and generate the toolpaths that control the router it's not the most user-friendly software in the whole world but it does allow for nearly limitless designs to be created even with the free version at the open builds website you can download a post processor which allows fusion to talk directly to the router my fusion models for all these projects will be linked below now i don't want to open the can of worms that is cad cam on this video but if you have any problems with creating tool paths from these models then head over to my form i can help you sort it out but back to the cutting board the inlay needs to be in the center and because these maple strips are so close to the middle it'll be easy to tell if the design is not perfectly centered the origin for my tool pass is the bottom left corner of this board it can be difficult to manually jog the end mill right above that corner due to the irregularities of wood this is why i like to use a touch plate not only does this plate pick up the tool height but it also finds the corner of the material even if the corner is a little dinged up this isn't a problem because the plate picks up the corner by sitting on the edges of the wood pretty nifty this 1 16 inch end mill is an upcut bit because i want a nice surface finish for the inlay to be glued to this is carving at a depth a little less than 1 16 of an inch i want the inlay to stick out just a little bit so that i can sand it down for the perfect finish before we make the actual inlay i'm going to use a 1 4 inch ball end mill to add a juice groove around the perimeter trust me i did not make that name up but basically this feature is a small groove that will collect any liquid when you're cutting veggies up on the board it's time to make the actual inlay out of this 1 16 inch maple work holding for inlays is difficult because usually you want an intricate design with small features that would rise up during the cutting process which puts them at risk for being decapitated by the router the painters tape and superglue method grips the entire back of the design if you've not seen this before then briefly you lay down a strip of painters tape on the back of the wood for the inlay completely covering the entire back i should have purchased some wider painters tape for this demonstration flip this over and you'll repeat it for the waste board all right so on the actual back piece of the wood i apply super glue and do this wave pattern so that the air can escape all right so now the super glue's on that back side i'm going to spray the activator on the painters tape on the waste board uh word of warning you have to work really quickly this stuff will set within five seconds now the inlay is smaller than the piece of maple so it's okay if it's not perfectly straight but in some instances you'll have to be really careful to make things straight it's down there nice and tight when i designed the inlay i made it three thousandths of an inch smaller than the pocket that it will sit in this may seem inconsequential but i find that 3000 to be the difference between a snug fit and an impossible one [Music] so i'm going to put a little bit of wood glue in the pocket [Music] moment of truth will it fit [Music] like i said it's gonna be snug i need to clamp it but i don't have the best way of doing this i'm using wood and i don't want to stick to the wood [Music] glue this should be dry i'm just going to stand it flat right now with this 80 grit super flat great transition but at this point we still have a sharp edge on the outside perimeter that needs to be knocked down on both the top and the bottom of the cutting board i could have programmed the router with the chamfer tool to take that edge off but i would have had to take a second operation to get the back side i find it way faster to just use my janky router table with a round over bit to remove that edge this can also be done by holding the router in your hand if you don't have a table or even just by sanding and yes the router table is facing the wrong way because one of the leveling screws in the front is stripped i did say janky let me know in the comments below if you want to see more woodworking and router videos if so i can upgrade some of my equipment next i'm going to sand the cutting board up to 220 grit now we get to my favorite part oiling the cutting board i like to use clark's food grade oil i can't decide which i like more the citrus or the lavender scent i think i'm going to go with the lavender this time around but basically you apply as much oil as the board will absorb you wipe it off and you come back and you do that again 24 hours later the wood acts like straws when it comes to this oil takes quite a bit set this on top of the paper towel roll and i'll come back and repeat this process in about 24 hours all right so we're back with our final coat of the oil it's a good idea if you're going to gift one of these cutting boards to give them the oil as well because you do have to condition these every now and then especially if you're washing them a lot the last step for this finish is to apply a wax coating now the wax is going to act as a protective barrier to prevent water from seeping into the wood we'll rub this on liberally we'll let that penetrate for 30 minutes and then we'll wipe off any excess and that'll be it and there you have a nice personalized cutting board [Music] as a bonus project instead of making a cutting board you can attach some legs to a nice piece of wood with inlay in it and make a table now obviously for this table i went with a circular design so i took my original walnut board and carved a circle into it i then made a pocket for a tennessee inlay now this design is technically an inlay within an inlay because the heart is made out of african purple heart i think it turned out great but really inlays are awesome to add a personal touch to any project [Music] to continue the culinary theme and transition into plastics the next project is a trivet which is a small plate to place under a hot serving dish to protect a table or surface it's basically a large coaster i'm going to make a couple different designs but all of them are going to be made from a combination of walnut and corian most people are not familiar with corian but basically it's a plastic that has the look and feel of stone however it's easy to cut and machine with these properties corian is a unicorn material and i'm always trying to use it in my projects here i have both a trivet with a stripe pattern as well as one with a polka dot pattern the polka dot one is kind of a pain in the butt so i'm going to walk you guys through making the striped one but i will have some footage at the end of the section for putting the dots into the walnut so the first step is to cut the corian and walnut into one inch strips now corian contains an acrylic polymer so it does pose an inhalation risk always cut in open air environment my garage is cracked and make sure you wear a mask i put a stop so i can just kind of plow through this material this tool in my left hand allows me to apply downward pressure on thin strips of material that can't be clamped while still keeping my fingers clear of the chop zone the dimensions of the stock corian and walnut pieces were a little bit different so i ended up having to cut the walnut lengthwise and then chopping that off down to eight inches to match the corian now that we have all these pieces cut out we need to glue them together but we have a small problem compared to plastics woods are dimensionally unstable they contract and expand with changing temperature and humidity when you glue a strip of wood to plastic that glue joint is going to be under a lot of stress because the plastic will resist the wood's tendency to change dimensions for this reason i have opted for a silicon based adhesive compared to say an epoxy this adhesive has the elasticity to allow for the wood to grow or shrink without separating from the plastic now when working with the silicon loctite it says on the side of the tube to let it cure for two hours but my experience the bond is not strong enough until about 24 hours so definitely wait a little bit of extra time i've also had luck with this medium flex super glue which sets up much faster but it's a bit more expensive the important part is that there's some kind of elastic component to the glue that you use for this i'm going to use the silicon [Music] adhesive [Music] the silicon is almost like a lubricant you got to press down pretty hard to make sure they don't rise up during the clamping process [Music] so given this ample amount of time to dry the walnut's a little bit taller than the corian so we need to go face this whole board so let's go over to the router now this material is only a half inch thick so we're definitely going to cut the clamps during the cutting action but that's okay this top piece only takes about eight minutes to 3d print so for this cutting operation we're going to use this single flute bit it's great at cutting hard plastic so it's going to make quick work out of the corian and it'll slice the walnut too no problem for feeds and speeds when it comes to routing woods and plastics i'm looking at the chip size if you're creating a fine dust when cutting hardwoods then the cutter is moving too slow through that material when a chip is flung off the end mill it will take some of the heat created during the cutting process with it powder takes very little heat with it so cutting too slow will cause your end mill to heat up and dull cutting too fast is much easier to diagnose because the normal hum of the router will change there'll be more vibrations and sometimes you can even see the tool deflect as it tries to take too big of a cut too quickly it's time to cut that circular profile into this piece of wood to get it trivet as the end mill goes around the perimeter it'll get deeper and deeper and deeper eventually breaking through this board now if we didn't do the super glue and painters tape method that trivet's going to break loose and possibly get gouged by the end mill instead for this time around i'm going to use tabs around the perimeter of the trivet to keep it in place this tab method is just faster than the super glue method before i cut away the tabs i'm going to knock off this edge that goes around the perimeter of the trivet with this 90 degree v-bit now not only is this end mill great for adding a chamfer but it's also really good at engraving which is one of the reasons why it's one of my favorite tools to have [Laughter] [Music] always sand this trivet up to 220 grit that gives me that nice smooth stone-like texture on the corian [Music] for the size we have to go the manual route finishing the trivet requires a bit more forethought in the cutting board because it's going to be exposed to hot metals and liquids this is a tongue oil varnish by old masters which i love to use on walnut because it really brings out its depth i'm going to apply several thin layers which will create this protective film that will prevent water and other liquids from penetrating into the wood this is an adhesive cork sheet which i'll stick to the back of the trivet to prevent it from sliding around when i'm trying to place a hot pot on it and there you have it now i was surprised to see that this design quickly became a fan favorite on instagram if you don't follow me over there then you're missing out now the polka dot trivit wasn't as easy to make but it follows pretty much the same principles instead of cutting out strips on the miter saw i cut out the dots on the router as well as the holes in the walnut for the dots as you can tell routing is quite the messy operation the wooden plastic dust will coat every single surface of your shop if given the opportunity for this reason i strongly recommend either a dust shoe or an enclosure the dust shoe obscures the end mill so i prefer the enclosure for filming purposes once the dots were finished holes were cut into the walnut stock as i said before and the dots were pressed in after some glue was applied and finally the trivet shape was contoured out [Music] so this next project may seem like the same song and dance because yes it's made out of corian and wood but this cookbook stand pulls double duty as a phone charger the idea was that i usually pull most of my recipes off the internet so i can stick my phone there and read those recipes while it's getting a charge this design is a dark color scheme with a black corian base but i lighten it up with some maple accents when i set out to make this stand i wanted a little more texture to this design because the cutting board and trivet have been very two-dimensional this texture came in the form of a hatch pattern on a piece of maple that's sandwiched between two pieces of black corian let's go ahead and create a new hatch pattern on this piece of maple i'm going to use the super glue and painter's tape method to secure this piece to the waste board because i need access to the entire top of it while i give that super glue a couple more seconds to bond let's talk about how this router is controlled now you may not have noticed but there's not a single computer inside of this router and that's because the entire machine is controlled by this touch interface now this thing can do everything from jogging the router to homing it to setting work coordinate offsets people have always wanted to be able to control their cnc router with an xbox controller but this thing's even better because not only is it a keypad but it's also a computer in itself you can take tool pass off of flash drive for this example i named the hatch pattern c1 click that it's loaded and it's ready to run now just using a 1 16 inch end mill here [Music] with that decorative piece out of the way we can start setting up the bottom of the book stand for wireless charging i purchased this three coil wireless charging unit off of amazon for about ten dollars just to make sure that we're all on the same page these copper coils transmit power to your phone or other qi enabled device by creating an oscillating magnetic field this induces an alternating current in the secondary coil which is found in my phone this current is passed through a rectifier which can then charge the phone's battery it's easy to incorporate these charging units into a project if you're mindful of two criteria material and distance for material wireless charging does not work through metal this is why phones that can be wirelessly charged have a plastic or glass back so our corian base is not going to be a problem i've seen a range of what that maximum distance can be but to be safe you don't want your phone to be farther than a quarter inch or six millimeters from the coils this leads us to our first routing operation this corian is a half inch thick so the plan is to carve out a pocket that is 3 8 of an inch deep when we seat our coils in that pocket they're only going to be an eighth of an inch or about three millimeters from the back of the phone when resting on the stand while i had access to the back of this piece of corian i went ahead and cut out a channel for a leg which will hold the stand at an angle so it will be easily viewable when standing more on this later let's move on to the ledge that will hold the bottom of the phone or cookbook the ledge is quite large allowing for up to an inch and a half of book thickness it might be a bit too large for this design but some of andy's cookbooks have hundreds of pages and i wanted to make sure they would all fit those big cookbooks are heavy so attaching this ledge is not going to be as straightforward as gluing it into place because those sheer forces are high i decided to go with a tongue and groove connection to give this ledge more support let's start machining it i cut the ledge out of a scrap piece of maple that was not straight this made it a little difficult to get the correct size ledge out of it but i fared all right after that op i flipped the ledge up on its side and cut that tongue out which is about a quarter inch thick and eight inches long with the ledge finished i machined the corresponding groove into the corian my work holding setup for this cut is super simple i'm just using some oversized washers to clamp directly on top of the material i have a set of 3d printed stair clamps or at least that is what i call them which is a more eloquent solution but i find these washers can provide a lot more holding force obviously these are made out of steel and an accidental collision with a cutter would not be pretty i also took this opportunity to make a lightning bolt shaped pocket so it'll be easy to place your phone right in the center of the charging unit i could have left it as it was but i went ahead and cut out a maple inlay lightning bolt too now it's time to glue all the pieces together instead of the silicone glue i went with the medium flex super glue to sandwich the maple between the two pieces of corian i played around with this adhesive off camera on some scrap corian wood i determined that four hours was a sufficient clamping time for that bond to come to full strength you would think that super glue would be much faster but it's something about this material that slows that process down after four hours i unclamped and then installed the wireless charging coils i hot glued this into place that long channel that i cut before was to manage that micro usb cable while still allowing for the coils to sit flat i snapped over a 3d printed cover just to prevent anyone from accidentally touching the pcb when moving the stand a quick test shows that my phone can be charged even with its case on the final part of this build is to add that support leg to hold the stand at a viewable angle i started off by cutting a bevel into the corian base with the miter saw at an angle of 33.9 degrees this was just a default bevel on my saw and seemed like it would be a good angle for andy and me we're both quite tall for the support leg i wish i could say i broke out my trig book and calculated that perfect length but in reality i started off with a support leg with a 33.9 degree bevel on one side and slowly cut the leg down until it sat flush at this point i wish i would have stopped because i really enjoyed the matte finish of the corian i tried to finish just the maple with the old masters tongue oil but i ended up having to cover the whole thing after it wouldn't wipe off the corian this gave it a much shinier appearance which i think looks great too but i prefer the matte a little bit more let me know your thoughts in the comments below which you like more hey guys before we get to the next project i want to pop in and see how you are enjoying the animations on this video if you love them i've got great news for you because my animator eric has released some dr d flow themed designs which i've stuck on some t-shirts and they're for sale below the proceeds will go towards bringing more educational animations to this channel back to the projects [Music] for the fourth project i wanted to carve up some aluminum to show that this beefy router can handle some metallic chips even though i have a large cnc mill that eats aluminum for breakfast you'd be surprised with how much i use the router for cutting aluminum the limitation of the mill is that it's very difficult to cut parts larger than nine inches wide because that's the max opening of my vise for that reason i find myself often making large mounting plates with the router just a quick tip for those who may want to use the router for similar projects you can purchase plates from mcmaster car or a similar retailer that comes with a machined finish then use the router to cut slots and holes in an outside contour this way you get that really nice surface finish as well as the profile that you want the resulting plate looks like it was made on a much more expensive and larger machine but let's be honest your loved one would be very disappointed if you gave them a mounting plate as a gift or in this case a 3d printer bed you should definitely subscribe to see this in an upcoming build for this reason i decided to make something more useful for the average joe and i ended up with this minimalistic wallet it's basically two pieces of aluminum that are held together by an elastic band and your credit cards and cash sitting between them it's easily accessible and way less bulky than a normal wallet this design was largely inspired by listing on etsy i purchased the dxf plans even though they are meant for a laser cutter and not a router i won't be able to upload my modifications to this design for obvious reasons but it's rather easy to model yourself if you don't want to purchase the plans however it's always a good idea to support these artists so they keep putting out more awesome designs this wall is going to be made out of 1 8 inch thick 6061 aluminum this plate as well as some of the other materials that have been used in these projects can be purchased from the materials section of the open build store 661 aluminum is perhaps the most widely used alloy in cnc machining due to not only its machine ability but also its strength and corrosion resistance i'm going to use the painter's tape method to hold the plate in place if you plan to cut a lot of aluminum then you're going to want to swap out that mdf waste board for a large sacrificial piece of aluminum when cutting metal rigidity is everything and that mdf board will vibrate which leads to broken tools at higher feed rates i'm going to take it slower for this reason however too slow of feed rates are just as bad they might not snap your cutter but continually running over the same chips will heat up and dull your end mill typically i run the machine anywhere from 30 to 60 inch per minute at a depth of about one half of the diameter of the end mill sometimes one third i always decrease the depth of cut before i turn down the feed rate the end mill that i'm using here is a single flute with a 16 inch diameter you don't want to use a high flute count because aluminum can stick to the space in between the flutes and gunk up the end mill the more space to evacuate the aluminum the better now most of this conversation has been a little overkill for this simple project but a lot of people purchase these routers as a cheaper and lighter alternative to a full-size mill if i just want to provide some tips for success i'm using my 90 degree v-bit to add a decorative engraving around the elastic belt paths and the perimeter of the wallet i also plunge cut some quarter inch holes for some fake fasteners on both pieces of the wallet the last cutting operation for this wallet is the creation of two pockets on the back of the aluminum half without the logo these pockets are where the ends of the elastic band will be super glued even though there's a radius on the bottom left corner the probe had no problem finding that origin for the part when cutting out these pieces i only used an occasional spray of wd-40 for lubricant again the setup here would look a lot different if i was using this machine for mostly aluminum work a minimum quantity lubrication system like the fog buster that i installed on my mill would be great for aluminum work on this router i used a walnut inlay for some contrast on my logo and the faux fasteners i cheated and used a laser cutter work holding even with the painter's tape method can be very hit or miss with these small pieces the laser cutter makes quick work out of these parts because you don't need to fasten the stock down i'm using a standalone laser cutter but you can actually purchase a laser module for this lead cnc machine which is pretty sweet but not something i currently have access to i glued the inlays in with my medium flex super glue the wood sticks out just above the face of the wallet so i need to sand that down 661 doesn't polish as well as other aluminum alloys and this is going to be constantly rubbing up against my keys because i'm a heathen and carrying my wallet in my front pocket so i'm only going to sand to 220 grit i'm using four different sandpapers to get up to this finish 80 120 180 and 220 grit when you move to a higher grit you want to rotate the wall at 90 degrees and sand until all perpendicular scratches to your current direction are gone i'm using a little bit of water as a lubricant to keep the aluminum moving over the paper i also wash the wall at half between papers because you don't want to carry over any of the lower grip material to the higher grit it's a bit hard to make out the torques design on the corner inlays because i didn't engrave the design deep enough and i almost sanded completely through them now i just need to measure out the correct size of quarter inch elastic band and then super glue the ends to the two pockets that i machined previously if you're going to carry a lot of credit cards and cash then you can make the band a little bit longer so that it isn't too difficult to add and remove credit cards and cash from the wallet the band just wraps around those little tracks that were carved after finishing the wooden bits with the old masters varnish we have a completed [Music] wallet for the last project i wanted to build probably the most profitable thing that a hobbyist can make on a cnc router a sign every business and house for that matter has some kind of sign hanging up i obviously went a little over the top and made a sign that is lit up with addressable leds but seriously even just cutting the words live laugh and love out of a piece of mdf can fetch a pretty penny let's go over how i made my dr d flow sign first i need to decide how big i wanted the sign to be the lead 1010 router can cut up to about 30 inches by 30 inches i could have created a massive sign by cutting one letter out at a time but i decided to go with something a little more modest and to just keep the sign under the dimensions of the work area from there i picked a retrofont and typed out my name i imported this text into fusion360 and extruded it this is going to be a layer design where i'm going to cut variations of the sign out three times and glue them together the middle piece is going to hold all the letters together the top piece will hold the light diffuser and the back piece will hide the led cables more on that now these are stranded 12 millimeter addressable leds and they are awesome the color of each led can be individually controlled some of my earliest videos go over just how to do that so definitely check out that content if you're not familiar with this magic i spaced out holes slightly larger than the leds with a diameter of 12.5 millimeters around the inside of the letters there are 50 addressable leds per strand don't look too closely i miscounted and thought i used all 50 but there's only 49 holes in my design a little embarrassing and you will see me cut off that 50th led during the wiring i didn't want this sign to look like a marquee light so i purchased some translucent acrylic that will diffuse the light to give the letters more of a uniform glow here's just a quick example led lamp without the diffuser with a diffuser without width the top of the side has a cutout so that the translucent acrylic once cut to size will sit flush with the top layer of the sign the back piece consists just of the perimeter so that the stranded leds can be wired to each other without interference now it's time to fire up the router i'll be making these three pieces out of mdf cutoffs that i had laying around i could have lined them up and cut them all at once but due to filming reasons i set up and cut each one individually in fusion 360 and other similar programs for generating tool paths there's a feature known as rest machining this feature allows you to hog out material with a large end mill and then follow up with a smaller end mill for the finer details that were missed this greatly reduces run time for this sign the quarter inch end mill was able to get most of the material removed but it could not fit on the cursive part of the l so i need to switch to a 1 16 inch end mill to clean that up you'd be surprised by how much force is required to loosen these collets on my old cnc router which was belt driven whenever i would try and switch out tools the whole gantry would move this would cause me to lose that original origin point and my subsequent cuts would be slightly shifted not good for rust machining that is not a problem whatsoever with this machine for two reasons the first is that the lead screw is super stiff and i have the high torque nema stepper motor upgrade on each axis for those reasons this thing stays put i can easily switch out tools with the peace of mind knowing that they'll be in the exact same spot when i get done with the change [Music] so [Music] next i need to cut that translucent acrylic there are a lot of internal pieces so i use the super glue and painters tape method for work holding i used a 1 8 inch straight cutter which leaves a nice clean edge when cutting acrylic [Music] [Music] with those cuts finished i went ahead and glued everything together this occurred in two separate steps because i didn't want both the top and bottom sliding around when i tried to align and clamp everything [Music] the top layer i used the translucent acrylic letters to make sure the internal bits of the d's and the o were correctly aligned after that dried i used a flush trim bit to shave off a little extra material i wish i had a longer one so i could completely eliminate the transition between the three layers but no one is going to be staring at the sides anyways with the leds on mdf is extremely porous so i used a thick sandable primer i'm not actually going to sand it for time purposes but it will fill in all those gaps and prevent the next layer of spray paint from getting sucked inside of the wood i applied some low-key black spray paint just so the letters would pop now it's time to route the leds they have a slight lip on them so they can pop right into the hole and are able to stay put without any adhesive the length of the wires between each leds only had to be extended in one spot right between the doctor and d flow i quickly spliced in an extension with my soldering iron [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] [Music] the plan is to hang the site up on the side of the router which will catch your eye when you walk into the garage but to mount this guy from the back i would have to bend those led wires pretty far over so i decided to glue on one more three quarter inch spacer to the back for the original testing i used an arduino mega to send data to the leds but i'm going to switch to a much smaller adafruit feather that will sit comfortably in the back of the sign [Music] i hope you guys enjoyed this roundup of my favorite projects to make on the cnc router these designs were on the simpler side because i didn't want complex toolpaths and setups to be a barrier to prevent you from making these projects let me know if you want to see more complex designs that require 3d toolpaths in the future i want to thank this video sponsor openbuilds this company has really evolved into a one-stop shop for everything cnc they sell the table the router the control system the end mills and even the materials i'd also like to thank this video's secondary sponsor things.com the new home for all of my 3d models definitely stop by and download this tow clamp which was super useful in all the facing operations that we did today i have some exciting added manufacturing content coming up so definitely subscribe because you don't want to miss that and with that i'll catch you in the next one

Channel: Dr. D-Flo

Views: 236,574

Keywords:

Id: cU-LR5Mn9fY

Length: 45min 34sec (2734 seconds)

Published: Sun May 30 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/doctordflo]

Just finished up this video on my LEAD 1010 router. I have to say that the cookbook stand that doubles as a wireless charger was my favorite project of the 5.

[u/eggplanet324]

hey doc, big fan of your content. I recently started building a CNC (granite surface plate/eg) bc of the vids you've posted on youtube that introduced me to how CNC systems work - thanks for making this type of stuff more accessible.

I got 2 questions: In the process of prototyping projects with an sla printer to be later machined out of aluminum, what are common pitfalls and are there any resources you could recommend for CNC router design for manufacturability.

And after your precision Matthews mill conversion, what kind of projects do you use it for? Like on a day-to-day basis how often do you use it for production based stuff and how often do you use it for prototyping. Thanks man

[u/[deleted]]

That cnc enclosure is amazing

[u/tripleDickle]

The level of detail on the projects here is really impressive- appreciate all of the insight into the speeds for aluminum. You’ve got a new subscriber in me, keep the vids coming!