My county office STEAM center is hosting Maker Mondays from 3-6pm for any educator to drop in to learn, explore or work on a project. I recently attended one in which the highlight topic was introduction to a CNC router. A computer numerical control (CNC) router is a computer-controlled cutting machine related to the hand-held router used for cutting various hard materials, such as wood, composites, aluminum, steel, plastics and foams.
I love machines and the idea of carving things. My only experience using machine tools was in 7th grade to make a napkin holder and a rainbow wood sign for our mailbox, so it's been a while.
We were given a square composite to make a sign. I decided to find a quote about perseverance to carve out, since if you are a public educator, this is a big part of our daily reality, no matter what area you might be in. Plus, it is a core component of a Maker mindset.
We used a program called Easel to construct our design. I found Easel fairly easy to use since quite a few aspects were intuitive. You can choose shapes and types of font, etc. Having step by step directions though, helped! Robert showed us some finer aspects of the program, like choosing the size drill bit and how to know how much space you actually have on the canvas. We also learned about depth of the carving and the impact of a shallow vs deeper cut. A deeper cut can add considerable more time to complete. We double checked in the Preview to see if our design would carve out correctly and deep enough. I had to tweak my depth and type of font in order to get a decent carving.
One other thing I learned from watching Robert clipping the composite was to make sure that the clips were not in the drill's range of carving. On one clip he eyeballed, it ended up carving part of the metal clip up. Live and learn.
It took about 20 minutes to carve my masterpiece. I have realized that I would really like to continue practice using programs like Tinkercad and Easel since you can take your 3D creation and actually bring it to life with materials.
I love machines and the idea of carving things. My only experience using machine tools was in 7th grade to make a napkin holder and a rainbow wood sign for our mailbox, so it's been a while.
We were given a square composite to make a sign. I decided to find a quote about perseverance to carve out, since if you are a public educator, this is a big part of our daily reality, no matter what area you might be in. Plus, it is a core component of a Maker mindset.
We used a program called Easel to construct our design. I found Easel fairly easy to use since quite a few aspects were intuitive. You can choose shapes and types of font, etc. Having step by step directions though, helped! Robert showed us some finer aspects of the program, like choosing the size drill bit and how to know how much space you actually have on the canvas. We also learned about depth of the carving and the impact of a shallow vs deeper cut. A deeper cut can add considerable more time to complete. We double checked in the Preview to see if our design would carve out correctly and deep enough. I had to tweak my depth and type of font in order to get a decent carving.
One other thing I learned from watching Robert clipping the composite was to make sure that the clips were not in the drill's range of carving. On one clip he eyeballed, it ended up carving part of the metal clip up. Live and learn.
It took about 20 minutes to carve my masterpiece. I have realized that I would really like to continue practice using programs like Tinkercad and Easel since you can take your 3D creation and actually bring it to life with materials.
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