CNC Router Projects

[Mike Vieira]

What kind of student projects are people using to introduce students to CNC Routers?  Does anyone have good tutorials that they have created or taken from somewhere that they would be willing to share?  We are adding a router this year and am interested to see what others are doing with them. 

[Bob Koll]

Mike,  

Check out the CO2 car tutorial at Rhino3d.com.  (Search using 'Racecar' tutorial).  I will send you the link too.  The machining  pdf and the pdf of the 'flip' jig I made works fantastic for the actual machining.  

'Relief' models are good too.  The bar exercise in the Level one manual is good too; scaling, holding, and a other considerations  are important.  

Cut foam for 1st-run of your projects.  Messy, but cheap.  Pink or blue, 1, 1-1/2, or 2" 4x8 sheets at the lumber yard.  

bob

[Bob Koll]

The Link to our Racecar tutorial.

Rhino CO2 car tutorial

What CAM software are you using or going to use with your router?  Some of them have some pretty good experience with the CO2 cars.  

[Bob Koll]

At the Kelso workshop yesterday, I provided two teachers from Quincy High School the attached model.  It is about 5x5x.5 thick:

1 Scale to meet your needs

2 Change the Lettering.  (I use Comic Sans Font for most of this stuff).  Use the Fillet Curve command (FilletCrv) to clean up all the sharp corners of the letters.

[Bob Koll]

Here is the file: