All,
Here is the recap of the October CNC SIG Meeting.
First, @Kasper took a picture of his cats, traced a vector of ‘em (as you do), and CNC’d ‘’em! I think the CNC’d versions of Skeletor and Rosie turned out pretty good. He’s thinking about epoxying the eyes. We’ll see if there are any updates from him at the next meeting in November.
Another dope piece from Austin is this topographical map he made using trailprint3D, which is a Blendr extension. All you have to do is give it a GPS coordinate, and it will give you a topo map. In this case, the map is of a hiking trail. After grabbing the map, Austin used the fluting toolpath to cut out the map on the CNC. Terrific job.
Austin is also experimenting with inlays and had a question about how to set the depths of each piece. Inlays are a procedure where two pieces of wood are joined in a male-to-female orientation so the contrasting color and types of wood makes your art (or functional piece) truly pop. Steve pointed out that there’s a highly detailed and understandable video on this topic from Ryan at Cutting It Close. Ryan explains how to set the inlay depths at 14:29 in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEN8lhMUNXM – see 14:29
Next, @bwatt shared with us his paint system, which he built with ChatGPT. Using its help, he’s developed the connection point to mate the paint brushes to the CNC. He’s asking if there’s anyone who wants to build components that attach to his universal mating system. If so, that’d be awesome! Maybe someone has already designed something—who knows? Also, if anyone wants to work with him to attach a laser to the CNC (in an ultra safe way ofc), he’s down.
@SteveW made this amazing eagle out of Colorcore, which is a laminated HDPE. He started with the black-and-white version and moved to the colored one. Steve also shared with us another great YouTuber we can follow to get ideas of how to design amazing art, just in time for the holidays. In this video Matthew Peech shows us how to create a Christmas Tree: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXURvAPtbFY
Next month’s meeting is on November 2nd, 2025 at 12:30pm in the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR). The theme is Flatpaks & Display Stands, all in time for the Maker Market!
The recorded Zoom meeting for this month should be added later.
As a final note, the thinking is that for Christmas we might do a CNC White Elephant. Oooo! That could be fun!
Cya guys soon!
@jamesfreeman @TravisGood @Christopher @taylor.gates @Rennay @sneezix @michleon100