New CarveWright CNC router
I have acquired the use of a CNC router for my next couple of projects. It arrived yesterday, but I have been too busy to play with it. I had about two hours today, so I set it up and decided to dive straight in and start a project from scratch without watching any tutorials, or reading too many directions, just to see how intuitive the software is, and how easy the system was to use.
Taking delivery
Can you tell that I was waiting for the UPS man? I got to open the box today and get it set up. Of course there was no room for it in my shop, so the little used jointer got booted to the garage, and the spindle sander got moved to my workbench. The stand for the spindle sander was the perfect size for the CarveWright.
Unboxing
Ready to go
I got everything quickly set up and went upstairs to install the software. One of the things that I will be carving on the altar panels will probably be an angel, so I grabbed an image off the internet and erased everything but the angel and imported it. I probably spent 45 minutes playing with the tools and cleaning up the image until I achieved something to work with.
Playing with the software
Angel image
Adam and I went down to the shop, input the file, loaded a bit, and started cutting. The program said that it would run for 39 minutes, but Adam was convinced that it would run faster if he watched it.
It goes faster if you watch it…
Oops, found a knot on the second layer
I decided to cut the image in only about 1/8″ deep for the test run. The first few cuts we ran into a knot with a void, so I probably won’t be doing much carving in plywood in the future.
39 minutes to complete
The results were not overly impressive, but I wasn’t trying for more than a test run to see if I could manage on little direction. I am hoping that I will learn a lot more once I have a chance to sit through a few tutorials.
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Midnight Woodworking 