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<\/p>\nI am an engineering intern at the Dassault Syst\u00e8mes Boston Fab Lab and a graduate student in mechanical engineering at Boston University. I am most interested in the intersection of art and engineering. I am always looking to learn a new craft and I developed this project to help me learn how to use a CNC router. I would definitely recommend this project to any beginner because it is relatively simple in that it doesn\u2019t include any mating parts or require you to flip and re-zero the part.<\/p>\n
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I modeled the above design in SOLIDWORKS by extruding a sketch at a 60\u00b0 draft angle. I wanted to create something that was both abstract and geometric in nature. The wave pattern is organic and possesses a loose symmetry while the triangular profile of the drafted extrudes provides a hidden geometric component.<\/p>\n
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The photo on the left shows my rendered part in Vcarve Pro. I was able to use Vcarve Pro to create a Roughing tool path, a Finish Machining tool path, and finally a 2D Profile tool path to cut out the pieces. I sent these tool paths to the Shop Bot for each piece and let it work its magic!<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog-assets.solidworks.com\/uploads\/sites\/3\/Blog_AMiller_Image3b-615x289.png\")
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The above photo shows my piece after its passes in the shop bot and a few passes with an orbital sander. I chose to use poplar for this project because it is an easy and affordable wood choice for beginner projects. However, I felt that the poplar’s contrasting grain patterns took away from my overall design so I decided to paint it. MDF may have been a better option for this project if I had committed to painting it earlier.<\/p>\n
I worked my way up from 100 grit to 400 grit sandpaper and was eventually left with a piece that was ready for painting! I primed, painted, and finished my piece with a coat of water-based satin polyurethane.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog-assets.solidworks.com\/uploads\/sites\/3\/Blog_AMiller_Image4.png-615x461.jpg\")
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Here is my final piece happy and hanging! I added some mounting hardware to the back and used a bit of mounting putty to keep everything in place. I\u2019m happy with the result and glad that this project exposed me to multiple facets of what a CNC router can do. It\u2019s always satisfying to take a model from SOLIDWORKS and turn it into something real.<\/p>\n
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I am an engineering intern at the Dassault Syst\u00e8mes Boston Fab Lab and a graduate student in mechanical engineering at Boston University. I am most interested in the intersection of art and engineering. I am always looking to learn a<\/p>\n... Continued<\/a>","protected":false},"author":546,"featured_media":12267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5202,5381,6414],"tags":[4016,6988,4464,4982,6308,4048,3931],"class_list":["post-12266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-2","category-cad-2","category-makers","tag-3d-cad","tag-abstract","tag-cam","tag-cnc","tag-cnc-router","tag-engineering","tag-solidworks"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/546"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12418,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12266\/revisions\/12418"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}