Using A Shopbot making Children Furniture & Accessories

[scottdonley]

I am new in this area, I have doing alot of research in buying a CNC Router. I Have been going to school(Fulltime) for the last couple of years learning CAD/CAM, CNC programming, & Machine tool technology. I recently had to go back into the workforce because of a growing family. My wife & I want to have a small business in doing Children furniture and clothing. Nothing to exciting, but something to make us happy. I would use the Shopbot for making custom furniture and accessories. I would like to talk to someone who had done something similar. Any information would be appreciated.

[davidallen@iname.com]

make sure your CAD system supports 'parametric dimensioning'. that way you can vary your parts files to fit the child (chair height based on knee to heel distance, etc.) while still maintaining scale and proportion.

[cmrtom]

I have found, after 2 years, that I can do just about anything in Autocad. Including 3-D

Make the drawing in Autocad with their standard .dwg file and export it as a .dxf. The BOT takes .dxf files and does a flawless job of converting the file in a few seconds. You can use different lines of color to establish the depth. According to the file conversions #1 is Red, #2 is Yellow, #3 is Green, #4 is Cyan, #5 is Blue, #6 is Magenta, and #7 is white. As you draw the files you can also do multiple passes as you need to take a small cut in each pass.

Works like a champ