A bit of a rant by Matthias Wandel - good luck if you can get through to the end!
It’s a sort of debate really with him on the negative side some things are quite tongue in cheek.
So I’ll take his side on the debate and sit back and wait for the “other” arguments!
A lot of his “it’s wasteful” comments can be easily argued as operator error or lack of expertise, and he doesn’t address the obvious benefit if you are going to make more than one thing, but I’m probably about to get stuck into making a batch of bee hives and I’m pretty sure it won’t be on the LR3.
HOWEVER, most of what he says is a sentiment I deal with almost every day; it’s just quicker for me not to bother.
I rarely need a drawing to make something in wood, just a bit of a chicken scratch on a scrap of ply or an envelope, so it’s much faster for me to just go downstairs and make something than to draw it, try get the cam together (not using it all the time is like starting again for every project) and then try to remember how to turn on the LR3 (I’m not kidding!).
Don’t get me wrong - I love watching it work, but it’s not like the printer, where I can draw something and come back to a finished product at the end of the day.
In the interests of further procrastination - your thoughts would be appreciated!
Haha this is like clickbait when posted on a forum like this. I made it 5 minutes in and that was enough. I saw some valid points that were a bit exaggerated. It’s certainly not the tool for everything.
Hold my beer (I don’t drink anyway so you may as well have it)… I find making finger joints on the table saw to be one of the most satisfying things ever.
I have a few jigs next to the table saw to do stuff that the CNC could do, but using jigs with the table saw is way faster, and super repeatable. Some involve angle cuts that the CNC is actually NOT very good at, too.
Of course, guess how I built the jigs…
I dont need the CNC either, but there are definitely things that I would have a lot of trouble making without it, or would be made very differently.
I see where he’s coming from, to a degree, and I think that it’s reasonable to have some counterpoint type opinions out there in the maker/influencer sphere, I just wish he’d phrased it more as a ‘for me and my skills’ perspective. Ultimately I’d say it depends a lot on what you’re doing, what your goals are and what other tools you have to hand.
I haven’t built myself a large format CNC because from what I’ve seen I think I can probably make equivalent things that I’d want to make faster (or at least not ‘that’ much slower) with a combination of track saw, jig saw and router templates in a lot of cases, but that’s based purely on my own goals, skills and limitations. I’d love to do something like a full sheet LR4 but I simply don’t have the space to build a large format CNC and leave it set up, let alone storing enough material to feed it, but I also don’t seem to run into anything that I’d use it for all that often.
I’d love to see an honest assessment of how many runtime hours the average DIYer CNC machine has gotten. I suspect that the distribution would be pretty wildly skewed towards a few standouts with thousands of hours and then the median would be single to low double digit hours.
I think it’s similar to 3D printing where it seems to me that a lot of people think they’re going to get a 3D printer and print all the things, yet of the maybe 5 people I know who have them, I’m the only one who actually spends any appreciable time modelling things and making them vs downloading pre-existing models and printing them. Aside from the MPCNC and LR3 parts, I think I’m probably at 5% downloaded and 95% DIY for printing time and maybe 50-60kg of filament over the years.
None of that’s a problem, of course, it just depends on where things balance out for each individual.
I don’t drink either, but I suddenly found myself holding several people’s beers. I’m staying out of this one. Just kidding. I’m wading in just enough to say, I could make some things without CNC but it would take me way longer and would not be as good.
Matthias is not average in most ways. He also doesn’t buy plywood and prefers to pick up old furniture on the side of the road despite being one of rhe first few blackberry employees and being able to afford it.
I totally support him and it is very entertaining watching him solve problems. But I don’t take his advice without some skepticism.
A lot of people do think they can just download a plan and start the CNC to work on it. It definitely isn’t that and a little bit of humble pie is good for new users to understand that they need to hone some skills to be able to be successful.
He’s actually the guy that got me more interested in building things out of wood.
I used to do a lot of building/fixing like contractor work, but it wasn’t until I came across his site in like 2009 and saw him building machines and gears out of wood and stuff that I had a new appreciation for what was possible.
I’ve never had time to do near what I wanted to do with that knowledge, but I’ve always been impressed by what he has been able to do.
I recently had to make a bunch of bowties for a project (two dozen +). Super easy model, super easy g-code, etc. CNC cuts them in just under a minute each. I worked on getting one bowtie placed while another was being cut. Absolute perfect application in my mind.
I guess my first question is - do you use onshape?
If not, sign up for a free account and poke around for a bit. Once you are a little familiar, there are gadgets called “feature scripts” which are mostly community created.
Take care, some of these are incomplete or just don’t work as expected, but a quick trawl around the internet will give you a good idea and usually poke you towards the good 'un for your purposes.
The one I’ve used is called “Spur Gear”
Go to the top right corner of the menu, and add a Custom Feature.
Dude, teacher. I’ve got every single one of them. Fusion Education, Inventor, AutoCAD, Shapr3D, OnShape, Siemens Parasolid… OnShape is pretty neat.
But the feature script thing is a good hint. I actually added one of those, a better Boolean Operation thingy to substract the AMB from the mount…
Thanks a lot for the tips and tricks anyway, I am not really good in any of the programs and just stumble and fumble my way around them.
Cut some gears on the CNC. 
