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Less Talk, More Do

Christopher Finke writes about things he has done: software, woodworking, and other creative endeavors.

Search Results for: Cnc

CNC, Home Improvement, Woodworking, X-Carve

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

November 12, 2017Christopher Finke 1 Comment

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 […]

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3D Printing, CNC, Maker

Functional Print and CNC Carving Mashup: Mini Air-Hockey Pucks

July 22, 2017Christopher Finke 2 Comments

In today’s Don Rickles news, I 3D-printed and CNC carved some mini air-hockey pucks. We were given a mini air-hockey table this week, but it didn’t have any pucks, and after buying some at Walmart, we learned that the table didn’t use full-size pucks. After five minutes in OpenSCAD and half an hour of machining, […]

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CNC, Maker, Woodworking

Artisanal CNC-Carved Growth Chart

May 8, 2017Christopher Finke 3 Comments

My kids have been requesting a growth chart, so I made one with my X-Carve. I used red oak left over from when I built our dining room table. It took three separate carves to get all six feet of numbers and inch delimiters carved since the X-Carve’s workable area is only about 30 inches […]

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CNC, Maker, Woodworking, X-Carve

CNC-ing a Stepstool out of a 1×12

March 29, 2017Christopher Finke 4 Comments

My wife requested that I make matching stepstools for our hall bathroom so that the smaller children could reach the faucets. I used the opportunity to design a stepstool that could be carved out of a 1×12 and assembled in minutes. I used Inventables’s Easel software to design a stool that would be 12″ tall […]

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3D Printing, CNC, Maker, Woodworking

I Built a Set of Cabinets with CNC-Carved Doors

February 20, 2017Christopher Finke 5 Comments

The area above our washer and dryer (not pictured) was mostly wasted space, so my wife asked me to build some custom cabinets. (Actually, she said, “Can you just buy some cabinets for above the washer and dryer? You really don’t have to build custom ones. I just want something better than this shelf. Anything. […]

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CNC, Maker, Woodworking, X-Carve

Today’s CNC Carving: A Chisel Rack

January 13, 2017Christopher Finke 1 Comment

In today’s “new meets old” news, I’ve used my CNC router to carve a rack for my chisels. I designed the rack in Easel, Inventables’s CAD/CAM software, which only took a few minutes. The chisel holders are just circles superimposed on rectangles to allow each individual chisel to fit vertically in the rack, and the […]

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CNC, Maker, OpenSCAD, Woodworking, X-Carve

Today’s CNC Carving: Doll Bunk Bed Insert

January 8, 2017Christopher Finke Leave a comment

My wife and I decided that we were spending far too much money on factory-carved objects, so we bought our own CNC router — a 1000mm X-Carve from Inventables. I finished setting it up today, and the first carving on the agenda was a replacement insert for my daughter’s doll bunk bed: The bed broke […]

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CNC, Maker, Woodworking

I Built a Mid-Century Modern Nightstand

A 31" tall, 9" wide, 18" deep nightstand made of red oak. January 17, 2021Christopher Finke 1 Comment

When I was tasked with making a  31″ tall nightstand for my mother-in-law that would fit in a 9″ wide space next to her bed and provide drawers and a shelf. I decided to use the opportunity to try a furniture style I haven’t tried before: mid-century modern. From what I can tell, “mid-century modern” […]

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CNC, Woodworking, X-Carve

How to use your router to install your router lift for your other router

November 30, 2020Christopher Finke Leave a comment

I bought a JessEm Rout-R-Lift II router lift for my shop. It needs to be recessed into a workbench, but it doesn’t come with a template for cutting an appropriately sized hole. You can buy an MDF template for $27, or you can do as a I did, and make your CNC router carve the […]

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Christmas, CNC, Maker, Woodworking

Secret Santa 2018: Japan in Maple and Walnut

March 14, 2019Christopher Finke 3 Comments

For my workplace Secret Santa gift exchange this Christmas (you know, the one that very recently took place), my recipient was a Japanese citizen who likes to hike, so I made him a 3-D topographic map of Japan out of maple and walnut. The steps to build it were pretty simple, so I won’t caption […]

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CNC, Maker, Programming, Woodworking, X-Carve

Generating and Cutting Halftone Images on the X-Carve

January 10, 2019Christopher Finke 2 Comments

Halftone is an app I’ve written for making halftone-style carves with Inventables’s Easel CNC design platform. A halftone image uses different sized dots to represent light and dark areas. Upload an image, and Halftone will convert it to a grid of holes with each hole sized to reflect the brightness of the image at that […]

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CNC, Maker, Woodworking

I Built an Infinity Wishing Well

March 4, 2018Christopher Finke 10 Comments

A few weeks ago, my wife mentioned that she’d like me to find something to cover the septic tank cleanout in the front yard. I had strategically placed a bird bath next to it two years ago, but I guess people were still able to see the pipe. Where I’m from, when we have a […]

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CNC, JavaScript, Programming, X-Carve

Turn Your X-Carve into a Plug Cutter

November 24, 2017Christopher Finke 3 Comments

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 […]

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3D Printing, Maker, Woodworking

I Built a Shoe Cabinet

August 14, 2017Christopher Finke 24 Comments

Our front entryway usually looks something like this: Those are bins to hold shoes; they’re uncharacteristically empty in this picture, but with as many as seven kids in the house at any given time, they’re usually overflowing (and not nice to look at). We decided to get a shoe cabinet to keep the shoes (and […]

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CNC, Maker, Woodworking

I Made the Bower Power Industrial Tripod Fan

June 19, 2017Christopher Finke 5 Comments

My wife came across this DIY tutorial from Bower Power on how to make your own industrial-style tripod fan, and she loved it. Of course, what my baby wants, my baby gets: I cut the tripod center on my CNC router because I still need to justify its purchase.  Leave a note in the comments if […]

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OpenSCAD, Programming, Woodworking

Generating Dovetails in OpenSCAD

January 10, 2017Christopher Finke 2 Comments

I’ve written an OpenSCAD library for generating dovetail pins and tails. No longer will beautiful dovetail joints be solely in the domain of skilled woodworkers; now, anyone with a 3-D printer or CNC router can participate too. Include it in your OpenSCAD script like so: use <dovetails.scad>; dovetail_pins() will generate just the pins of a […]

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3D Printing, Akismet, Maker, Programming

Meet Akisbot

November 28, 2014Christopher Finke 1 Comment

Akisbot is the Akismet mascot; he was originally designed by Dan Hauk, but this 3D version was modeled and printed by yours truly. Here’s Dan’s design that I used as a reference during fabrication: I designed the entire thing in OpenSCAD, and I’ve published all of the source files on GitHub, so you can print […]

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3D Printing, Maker

I saved a pair of sunglasses with a 3D printer

October 13, 2014Christopher Finke 1 Comment

My sister-in-law’s sunglasses lost an accent from one of the earpieces, leaving the left temple loose. Could I fix this?, she asked. Twenty minutes and 63 millimeters of plastic filament later, my purchase of an Orion Delta 3D printer was 100% validated. The accent on the print bed. The accent installed. With the temple opened. […]

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