A successful test cut after eliminating an earlier problem that turned out to be an assembly error. There's still a lot more tweaking that can be done, but it's pretty usable at this point.

On February 5 I cut steel on it for the first time. It's reversed because this is meant to be the crusher head for the CanBot, a can-crushing device the robotics team made. The (overly ambitious) idea was that it would stamp the team number into the crushed cans.

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.

The drawer construction is nonstandard, but I've used something similar for years now without any trouble. Normally you'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'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'm going to see if glue and nails will work. These don't need to be super heavy-duty, and it's hard to beat the strength-to-time ratio of glue and a pneumatic nailer.

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.

By November 15 the first iteration was nearly complete.

An assembly fixture helped a lot. It's a sheet of OSB on sawhorses with small wood blocks screwed down at intervals to locate the parts.

This might be the first time I've put drawers into something within a few months of assembling the case.

There were issues galore, mostly tolerancing, which is typical for a CNC project. But I think they're all addressable, and the end result is completely usable.

The next day: now to actually put things away. Here's one of the drawers with a 3D-printed organizer in it.

This is the bench at the end of an evening in late September. Good progress, but lots left in this build. The kit parts are laid out, with the instructions up on the laptop.

And the frame, partly assembled, surrounded by bags of hardware.

A regular socket wouldn't fit into one tight spot, so I ground down the outside wall of a 7 mm deep socket. Having a grinder means never having to say you're sorry.

By October 2 it was probably about two thirds done: you can see the frame, the table, the ballscrews and linear rails, and a stepper motor on top of the Z axis. Yes, it has ballscrews. Fancy, but necessary.

On October 3 the mechanical assembly was complete, so next up was electrical. That's the finished machine at the top of the page.

I chipped away at the electrical work when I had time. Here's the back of the machine with the electronics bay open, showing the controller boards and wiring, with the coolant reservoir on the side. The power-on smoke test didn't reveal any immediate glaring issues.

Next up was installing the software and making it move. The machine also needs a home: I'm planning to use the big CNC at the makerspace to make a rolling cart for it to sit on, with room for the power cables, coolant lines and so on.

On October 10, finally, all three axes working.

I also had to build a coolant basin for it to sit in.

She also made a few more of these for my siblings. They are about 6" square, and inspired by a Chinese "chop", . The one pictured says "Shu shu", which is "father's younger brother". My sister got the equivalent one that means "father's younger sister". For these, she hand-painted the cavities after routing.

Step one was to figure out how to fixture it so I can mill some precision into it. Here's the base upside-down on the mill vise, with a dial indicator reading its surface. I think this will work.

Here it is on the router. It works pretty well - we align it with the side rail using 123 blocks, clamp down the vises, and we have something we can repeatably secure extrusion in.

The logo was cut on my Mostly Printed CNC router, which I set up under the deck for the job.

Here it is at work: a wider view first, then a close-up of the bit going through the wood.

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.

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.

Here's the sign up on the wall at the store, with the installation still underway.

And Toby and me in front of it.

I love looking at it every time I go into his Vienna store.

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.