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CNC Router Essentials

Design Essentials : 2

if the sign wasn’t CNC cut, study its layout and shape and then use those elements in your designs. If you see something you like, whether it’s painted, hand carved, laser engraved, or molded, grab the idea and archive it.

Think outside the box

As you look for ideas, don’t discount anything as a possibility. When you’re new to CNC, it’s easy to look at something and think it’s too hard. But as your skills increase, you’ll want to have more challenging projects. If you like it, capture it, and then figure out later how to execute it.

Keep your ideas organized

With today’s smartphones and tablets, and the fluid nature of the Internet, it’s easy to grab ideas no maer where you are. Maybe too easy, since it makes keeping all these files organized a challenge. There are many approaches to this with today’s technology. At a minimum, keep your ideas organized by category so you can find them as your collection grows deeper and deeper.

From inception to completion, you can let your creative juices flow with CNC work. Keep in mind that, in addition to wood, CNC machines can cut aluminum, brass, bronze, foam, and a variety of other materials. Start stockpiling those ideas!

size because an .stl shape is a wire mesh. As you scale up the model, the mesh becomes visible as flat triangular facets, which will also be visible in the final carving. The best defense against this is to use a high-resolution .stl designed for CNC design work and preview the .stl in the CAD/CAM soware before commiing it to your design.

Project inspiration

Where can you find project ideas? Well, a simple web search or a visit to Pinterest or Instagram will reveal thousands of pictures of CNC work. A lile more searching will reveal sites with ready-to-machine CNC project plans—some for sale and some for free. Aer you get some experience, lots of existing DIY shop projects (wood, plastic, aluminum) can be converted to CNC projects. It’s a great idea to network with other CNC owners: join a forum or a user group. Some of these groups hold meetings with show-and-tell time, providing a close-up look at completed CNC projects and the opportunity to ask questions about how the person made them.

Signs

Making signs is an immensely popular application of CNC machines and an excellent way to gain some experience at CNC project design and machining. Plus, existing signs are all around and can be a rich source of inspiration. You will learn a lot about sign design by just looking at existing signs in your neighborhood. Even