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    <title>Cnc-Router on Craig Andera</title>
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    <description>Recent content in Cnc-Router on Craig Andera</description>
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    <lastBuildDate>Tue, 06 Oct 2026 10:25:07 -0400</lastBuildDate>
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    <item>
      <title>Shop Chest of Drawers</title>
      <link>https://www.craigandera.org/projects/shop-chest-of-drawers/</link>
      <pubDate>Sun, 16 Nov 2025 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
      <guid>https://www.craigandera.org/projects/shop-chest-of-drawers/</guid>
      <description>A fully parametric chest of drawers for my shop, CNC machined from full sheets of plywood and assembled with glue and nails.</description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[
<p>
This is a chest of drawers for my shop, and a design I&#39;d been working on for a while. It&#39;s intended to be CNC machined from full sheets of plywood, and it&#39;s fully parametric: I just type in drawer heights and quantities, and it generates a program for producing both the case and the drawers, ready to glue and nail together.</p>
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<h2 id="headline-1">
The design (October 2025)
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<p>
Drawers are mounted with standard drawer slides, and the CNC setup drills the screw holes for attaching them in both the drawer sides and the case sides, to make installation simple. The extra space below the lowest drawer is so I can fill it with concrete or something to keep the center of gravity low, and to provide stability if I park something heavy on top.</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/shop-chest-of-drawers/design.jpg" alt="./design.jpg" title="./design.jpg" /></p>
<p>
The drawer construction is nonstandard, but I&#39;ve used something similar for years now without any trouble. Normally you&#39;d make a box with a separate front rather than rabbeting the sides into the front, and the bottom would sit in a groove rather than just being attached flush. But I&#39;m optimizing for CNC construction, and glue is pretty damn strong. I used to use pocket screws for attaching drawer sides to ends, and I might still, but I&#39;m going to see if glue and nails will work. These don&#39;t need to be super heavy-duty, and it&#39;s hard to beat the strength-to-time ratio of glue and a pneumatic nailer.</p>
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<h2 id="headline-2">
Cutting the parts (November 2025)
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<p>
Full sheet CNC router for the win: the cabinet parts are cut. On November 3 I was about to find out whether it would go together correctly and as easily as I was hoping.</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/shop-chest-of-drawers/cut-parts.jpg" alt="./cut-parts.jpg" title="./cut-parts.jpg" /></p>
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Assembly (November 2025)
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<p>
By November 15 the first iteration was nearly complete.</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/shop-chest-of-drawers/photo.jpg" alt="./photo.jpg" title="./photo.jpg" /></p>
<p>
An assembly fixture helped a lot. It&#39;s a sheet of OSB on sawhorses with small wood blocks screwed down at intervals to locate the parts.</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/shop-chest-of-drawers/assembly-fixture.jpg" alt="./assembly-fixture.jpg" title="./assembly-fixture.jpg" /></p>
<p>
This might be the first time I&#39;ve put drawers into something within a few months of assembling the case.</p>
<p>
There were issues galore, mostly tolerancing, which is typical for a CNC project. But I think they&#39;re all addressable, and the end result is completely usable.</p>
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Putting things away (November 2025)
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<p>
The next day: now to actually put things away. Here&#39;s one of the drawers with a 3D-printed organizer in it.</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/shop-chest-of-drawers/drawer-organizer.jpg" alt="./drawer-organizer.jpg" title="./drawer-organizer.jpg" /></p>
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    <item>
      <title>Chinese Chop</title>
      <link>https://www.craigandera.org/projects/chinese-chop/</link>
      <pubDate>Sat, 19 Oct 2024 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
      <guid>https://www.craigandera.org/projects/chinese-chop/</guid>
      <description>My daughter&#39;s Chinese name chop, made large: a painted wooden blank with the shape routed out of the paint.</description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[
<p>
This one was designed and manufactured together with my daughter. It is her Chinese &#34;chop&#34; writ large. (A chop is a stamp used the way a signature is in Western society.) She made it by cutting and painting a wooden blank, and then we CNC routed out the shape, leaving the paint.</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/chinese-chop/photo.jpg" alt="./photo.jpg" title="./photo.jpg" /></p>
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More chops (December 2024)
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<p>
She also made a few more of these for my siblings. They are about 6&#34; square, and inspired by a Chinese &#34;chop&#34;, . The one pictured says &#34;Shu shu&#34;, which is &#34;father&#39;s younger brother&#34;. My sister got the equivalent one that means &#34;father&#39;s younger sister&#34;. For these, she hand-painted the cavities after routing.</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/chinese-chop/siblings-chop.jpg" alt="./siblings-chop.jpg" title="./siblings-chop.jpg" /></p>
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    <item>
      <title>Toby&#39;s Sign</title>
      <link>https://www.craigandera.org/projects/tobys-sign/</link>
      <pubDate>Thu, 09 Jun 2022 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
      <guid>https://www.craigandera.org/projects/tobys-sign/</guid>
      <description>A round wall sign for a friend&#39;s ice cream shop: plywood back, galvanized metal face, and a logo cut on my CNC router from poplar milled from a tree in my yard.</description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[
<p>
I made this sign for my friend Toby, the owner of <a href="https://tobysicecream.com/">Toby&#39;s Ice Cream</a>, which has three locations around the DC area. It has a plywood back and a galvanized metal top, and the logo is routed from poplar that I had milled from a tree that grew in my yard. I worked on it between April 21 and June 9, 2022.</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/tobys-sign/photo.jpg" alt="./photo.jpg" title="./photo.jpg" /></p>
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Cutting the logo (May 2022)
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<p>
The logo was cut on my <a href="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/mostly-printed-cnc/">Mostly Printed CNC router</a>, which I set up under the deck for the job.</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/tobys-sign/PXL_20220513_221639940.jpg" alt="./PXL_20220513_221639940.jpg" title="./PXL_20220513_221639940.jpg" /></p>
<p>
Here it is at work: a wider view first, then a close-up of the bit going through the wood.</p>
<p>
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</p>
<p>
Not every shape could be routed, though. For the rest, I used the CNC as a big plotter to draw the outlines on the boards, and then cut them out on either the band saw or the scroll saw. Or both.</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/tobys-sign/plotted-outlines.jpg" alt="./plotted-outlines.jpg" title="./plotted-outlines.jpg" /></p>
<p>
A few days later, the cut-out pieces of the logo laid out on the round galvanized disc on the plasma table. It was coming along nicely.</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/tobys-sign/logo-layout.jpg" alt="./logo-layout.jpg" title="./logo-layout.jpg" /></p>
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Installed (June 2022)
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<p>
Here&#39;s the sign up on the wall at the store, with the installation still underway.</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/tobys-sign/PXL_20220609_161242941.jpg" alt="./PXL_20220609_161242941.jpg" title="./PXL_20220609_161242941.jpg" /></p>
<p>
And Toby and me in front of it.</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/tobys-sign/IMG_3255.jpg" alt="./IMG_3255.jpg" title="./IMG_3255.jpg" /></p>
<p>
I love looking at it every time I go into his Vienna store.</p>
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    <item>
      <title>Owlbert</title>
      <link>https://www.craigandera.org/projects/owlbert/</link>
      <pubDate>Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
      <guid>https://www.craigandera.org/projects/owlbert/</guid>
      <description>A CNC-carved wooden recreation of Owlbert from The Owl House, made for my daughter&#39;s 17th birthday.</description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[
<p>
My older daughter is a huge fan of <em>The Owl House</em> — it&#39;s pretty good, you should check it out. This is a recreation in wood of Owlbert, a magical owl that sits atop the witch Eda the Owl Lady&#39;s staff. I made it for my daughter&#39;s 17th birthday. It was carved mostly using my CNC router, out of poplar, finished with various stains under shellac.</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/owlbert/photo.jpg" alt="./photo.jpg" title="./photo.jpg" /></p>
<p>
Here&#39;s a poorly printed 3D-printed prototype of the final piece. I think I made it to get an idea of the proportions. My daughter still has it, so maybe she likes it.</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/owlbert/printed-prototype.jpg" alt="./printed-prototype.jpg" title="./printed-prototype.jpg" /></p>
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Staining (October 2021)
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<p>
The face was stained light and the body and wings dark. On October 24, 2021, I had the stained piece clamped to the bench and was off to find a stain color somewhere between those two.</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/owlbert/staining.jpg" alt="./staining.jpg" title="./staining.jpg" /></p>
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    <item>
      <title>Priorities Sign</title>
      <link>https://www.craigandera.org/projects/priorities-sign/</link>
      <pubDate>Thu, 12 Dec 2019 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
      <guid>https://www.craigandera.org/projects/priorities-sign/</guid>
      <description>A CNC routed sign for my sister and brother-in-law&#39;s sailboat, Priorities.</description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>
This is a sign I made for my sister and brother-in-law that shows their boat, which has the awesome name of <em>Priorities</em>. It was CNC routed and then filled by hand using different types of wood and, I think, epoxy.</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/priorities-sign/framed.jpg" alt="./framed.jpg" title="./framed.jpg" /></p>
<p>
And the sign before it was framed.</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/priorities-sign/photo.jpg" alt="./photo.jpg" title="./photo.jpg" /></p>
<p>
(I later also <a href="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/laser-engraved-coasters/">laser engraved coasters</a> with the boat on them.)</p>
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    <item>
      <title>Mostly Printed CNC</title>
      <link>https://www.craigandera.org/projects/mostly-printed-cnc/</link>
      <pubDate>Sat, 31 Aug 2019 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
      <guid>https://www.craigandera.org/projects/mostly-printed-cnc/</guid>
      <description>My Mostly Printed CNC (MPCNC) router, an extremely low-cost first CNC router that was better than it had any right to be.</description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>
This is my <a href="https://docs.v1e.com/mpcnc/intro/">Mostly Printed CNC</a> (MPCNC) router. It is an <strong>extremely</strong> low-cost router that nevertheless was an excellent and reasonably capable first CNC router. I built it over July and August of 2019, and I used it for the logo on <a href="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/tobys-sign/">Toby&#39;s Sign</a>, for instance. I subsequently gave it to a friend. I will eventually build its big brother, <a href="https://docs.v1e.com/lowrider/">the Low Rider</a>.</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.craigandera.org/projects/mostly-printed-cnc/photo.jpg" alt="./photo.jpg" title="./photo.jpg" /></p>
<p>
Here it is at work.</p>
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