... or computer numerical control.

As was touched upon previously, I am the owner of a shiny CNC machine.

This thing excites the hell out of me because I basically have a tiny little wood shop robot that can make art, and parts, and gifts, and who knows what else. There's only one thing complicating the matter

Turns out it's not as simple as saying "print" like my 3D printer. No, there's much to know about endmills, feed rates, router speeds, plunge rates, and a whole plethora of maths and terminology. In the above, I tried to make a grid of holes, but these all failed in various ways. The holes were all lopsided and, towards the end of the milling operation, the whole router would take this weird turn too early and would chew up the rest of the work. I was confused and getting a bit frustrated and down on the whole thing.

Luckily, I am not the only one throwing a CNC party. In fact, I'm the last one on the bandwagon. Between myself and a couple of other coworkers, we're kind of trudging through this world together, exchanging knowledge and tidbits as we learn them. It was during these CNC talk lunches that I overheard what my problem might be.

Check the belt tension.

Well, that fixed everything. There's still some things to consider like non-manual dust collection (I currently follow the router with a vacuum hose) and contraptions to hold the stock material down. But, you've gotta admit. That hunk of cherry is a sexy piece of wood. Let's have another glamour shot.

I'm now stoked to start making a bunch of cool shit. Perhaps we'll being seeing more on the blog this month :O