thomasutley

Tucson, AZ, US
member

Former full-time woodworker turned Ford chassis engineer turned aerospace program manager. Avid hobbyist now with as much time in my garage shop as time and the Tucson desert heat permits. Constant tinkerer with two innovative woodworking accessories being sold through well-known national retailers. Always dreaming of my next invention (you know...the one that will make me rich beyond my wildest dreams and permit me to go back to woodworking full-time once more).

Gender: Male


Recent comments


Re: CNC is Knocking on Your Shop Door. Will You Answer?

Seems to me that, as craftsmen, we still have to make a profit at our craft or we can no longer enjoy practicing it. If you enjoy using your hand tools and hand-held power tools, and couldn't give a rat's hind end about new technology driven by computer software, by all means keep doing what you're doing. Your talents are valued, and the need for them will never go away.

If, however, you find yourself spending hours and hours rigging up jigs to replicate parts or make one-off cuts to meet a client's (or your own imagination's) demands, then you might do well to consider CNC technology as a complimentary set of tools. Imagine where we'd be today if we still had to chop down trees with axes or saw lumber with pit saws.

Ever needed to cut a shallow arc (i.e., a very long radius)? A CNC can cut out the part in seconds and it will be a perfectly fair arc without screwing together 40' of scraps to make a router trammel (not to mention finding space to actually use the contraption when it's done).

Ever needed to "bend" a piece of complex crown molding around something other than a 90° mitered corner? A CNC can mill it out of solid stock following any trajectory you care to throw at it.

Ever needed a template for some obscure shape like saloon door arches or Gothic windows or cyma curved dresser drawer fronts? What about something as "simple" as an elliptical mirror frame or oval table top? Any CNC can follow these shapes in 2D, plus a million others in 3D.

It's all about what works for you, and personally I find tremendous satisfaction in knowing the path that the machine is following came from inside my head. Like any other machine, a CNC is no smarter, or dumber, than the guy who programmed it.

--Tom

posted: 5:07 pm on September 7th