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Advanced Cabinet making on the ShopBot

🇺🇸 · Baltimore Hackerspace · Brice Farrell

Get it? On the ShopBot? Because… I know, it’s a terrible pun, but I actually did most of the work with the ShopBot too! This post is designed to show off what you can do with the tools in our shop – we offer free training for everything shown in this post, and it’s easier than I thought! The story starts when my friend made fun of my entry-way table, which is always covered in stuff. I realized I need an entryway cabinet, so I could hide all of that stuff in drawers! So I was bouncing ideas around in my head when a friend offered me a slab from his old tree. Cheap, cut with an Alaskan mill (aka a chainsaw with a spacer rig), and aged a few years in his back yard. I’ve watched fancy furniture videos on the internet for years, and here was my chance to try it! The first challenge is turning this chunk of tree into “Lumber”. The professionals have giant planers… ours is only 12″, and too small for this slab. But what we do have is a ShopBot! I drilled a few recesses and screwed the plank to the table, and ran a decking pass. Just a giant rectangle with a wide bit…

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Programming – Interlocking Exponential Circles

🇺🇸 · Baltimore Hackerspace · Brice Farrell

If you’re not a programmer, you can download the software here . Run the exe, load the sample SVGs, play around, and feel free to skip the details in the rest of this post. If you are a programmer and want to follow along, or think you can improve this software, please do! The source is available here . So… I decided I would make another cabinet (post coming next week!). And then, messing about in CAD, I realized I could create cool patterns with parametrically related circles. The only issue was the sheer number of cascading parametric relationships – each circle related to the circles touching it – managed to crash my machine. Even my beefy video-editing desktop. The easiest solution would be to change the design, but I was infatuated to the point I fell asleep thinking about circles every night… Spoiler: I figured it out So I dove in, assuming I’d figure it out as I went. The first challenge was to describe the actual expansion I was looking for… I knew I wanted the pattern to grow both in circle-radius and circle-spacing, but couldn’t really describe it better than that.

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Basic Cabinetry on the ShopBot

🇺🇸 · Baltimore Hackerspace · Brice Farrell

So… I still have 4000 spoons (please buy some) and needed better storage for them at the Hackerspace, so I decided to build a cabinet. This also gave me a first chance to break into furniture-making, which has always fascinated me. The goals here were cheap and fast, so we’re going to take a lot of shortcuts. However, I always try to learn one new skill on every project, so this week we’re learning wood-bending! First off, I got a sheet of “fancy plywood” from Home-Depot. I’m sure there’s a technical term, interior-grade birch something-or-other, but… I lets be honest. It’s bougie plywood. Then I measured the space the cabinet would fit into, and laid out the lid of the cabinet. This was a simple cut on the shopbot, which does a better job on curves than I ever could by hand. And when working with sheet-goods, we can use the vacuum hold-down which is convenient and saves the material from screw-holes. After the lid, I cut both exposed sides of the cabinet in one piece! The front portion is simple, as it matches the square edge of the top of the cabinet, with two doors inside it

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