Monthly Archives: November 2017

CNC, JavaScript, Programming, X-Carve

Turn Your X-Carve into a Plug Cutter

One of my favorite aspects of Inventables’s X-Carve CNC router is Easel, their free online carving software. My favorite part of Easel is that it is programmable — you can write apps for it. Apps automate tasks like turning an image into a puzzle, carving gears, or making inlays. Inventables has written nine apps and published another 14 from independent developers, and today, they’ve published my first app, Plug Cutter.

Plug Cutter turns your X-Carve into (wait for it) a plug cutter. What’s a plug cutter? It’s a woodworking tool that creates short dowels that you can use to cover screw holes. Here’s one that Rockler sells for cutting 1/4″ plugs ($16.99):

The Plug Cutter app turns your X-Carve into a plug cutter that can cut plugs in any size. The only constraint is your imagination (and the size of your X-Carve) (and the known diameter of the universe)!

Choose your plug quantity, diameter, and depth, and the app will organize them on your workpiece to minimize waste.

This is what the plug layout shown above looks like after it has been carved:

And this is what the plugs look like once they’ve been put into use:

The app itself is written in about 170 lines of JavaScript. It supports working in inches and millimeters, and it shows the exact cut that the X-Carve will make, depending on your current bit diameter.

You can see the Plug Cutter app’s sourcecode on GitHub, and if you have an Inventables account, you can try the app in Easel by clicking the Apps button and scrolling down until you see Plug Cutter:

If you try it out, post a shot of your plugs in the comments!

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CNC, Home Improvement, Woodworking, X-Carve

Today’s CNC Carving: A towel rack that says Towels

What do you hang your towels on? A plain old towel bar? Ha. A hook on the back of the door? Sad. You drape them over the shoulders of a mannequin like a cape? Ok that’s pretty cool.

But what would be even cooler would be to hang your towels on a towel rack that says “Towels.”

There’s no mistaking what goes on these hooks. Thinking of hanging up a bathrobe? Get out of here, buster. This rack is for towels.

“But there are so many hooks and I only have two towels!” Not my problem. Buy more towels.

If you want to make this towel rack that says “Towels,” head on over to the towel rack project page at Inventables.

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Alexa, Amazon, Programming

Activity Book: An Alexa skill for bored kids

Do you have an Amazon Alexa-enabled device? Do you have children? Are those children ever bored? If your answers were “yes,” “yes,” and “yes of course all the time,” then do I have an Alexa skill for you!

It’s called Activity Book. Enable the skill in your Alexa app (or by saying, “Alexa, enable the Activity Book skill,”) and then tell your kids to say, “Alexa, open Activity Book” (or more accurately, “Alexa, tell Activity Book I’m boooooooooored.”). Alexa will then give them something to do. Examples include:

  • “Why don’t you count the wrinkles in your elbow?”
  • “Climb a tree, but be careful. You don’t want to break any limbs.”
  • “Make up a secret handshake. After you teach it to someone, celebrate with a secret milkshake.”

The list of suggestions is long, ever-increasing, and appropriate for all ages.

This was actually the first Alexa app I wrote, back before Amazon allowed skills targeted at kids. I’m glad that they decided to support kids skills solely so that they could approve Activity Book. You humble me, Amazon!

The Activity Book code is open-source and available on GitHub.

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