WoodMarvels Blog

Each month, I do a review of the previous one and now that 2011 is behind us, here is a review of where things are now vs a year ago. If you are interested, you can skip through the monthly reviews for January, February, March, April, May, June/July, August, September, October/November and December of this year. You can also read the reviews for 2010 and 2009. What my goals were for WoodMarvels.com 2011 Release at least a few models in [...]

Now that my computer is back up and running, I’m able to release a backlog of projects! The Parasaurolophus CNC is a CNC router optimized, upscaled version of the laser version available on WoodMarvels.com. The original Parasaurolophus was my 37th laser model, and now my 8th CNC… things have changed a lot since then but this model is even stronger than the original! If you have a ShopBot or any other CNC router, you really want to give this easy [...]

The nice thing about running a mostly digital business is that everything you do is available to everybody else in the world as soon as it’s launched. I had a physical order kit a few months back from a customer in Indonesia… the traditional way to handle such an order is to get it cut at a major cutting hub or existing client with a laser shop along with associated transport and customs fees but then I got thinking. I [...]

It’s taken 400 videos over the past few years but my YouTube.com account now has a total lifetime view count of 1,003,921! (front end stats lag behind backend ones apparently) What makes this interesting is that I can pretty easily date the videos based on the imagery shown… the worse it is, the older the video! No music = ancient first batch of videos ever used on WoodMarvels.com. So… here are the top 10 most viewed videos from across my [...]

I’ve completed the optimization of Jerry’s original helicopter which was made for laser cutters. This version is much larger, has more internal guides that help keep individual parts together and all this fits on two 400mm by 500mm 6mm sheets of plywood! Here are the videos below showing me cutting these models with my ShopBot Desktop and assembly afterwards. The files are available right now at WoodMarvels.com under Collaborations / ShopBot Tools. This is most likely the last model to [...]

A new Apatosaurus (Brontosaur) has been added to the Collaborations / ShopBot Tools section of WoodMarvels.com and is available in PDF, DXF/PartWorks file formats for download right now! This project is very simple to put together and is the second dinosaur to inhabit the CNC area of my site with a few more coming along for the ride shortly. What I really enjoyed about CNC’ing this product was the very nice size of the finished product… if there is one [...]

David Newman has a really cool MK3 Bobcat on WoodMarvels.com so I wanted to make it available as a CNC project. Here is the assembly animation to refresh your mind. MK3 Bobcat: 3D Assembly Animation (720HD) So with the new ShopBot Desktop, I converted the files over, make the t-bones and scaled it up… t-bones are needed because a round bit cannot make inner square parts and scaling it up allows the model to stay “mostly” intact quality wise even [...]

I’m now done the first batch of testing and CNC’ing (thanks to my Desktop Shopbot) of toys which I’ll be releasing as the animations and other production videos are done for each. Unlike their laser equivalent, these CNC router specific projects have been modified to be as much “load and cut” as possible. These files will be available in DXF which includes the Partworks file (which you can import into Aspire too)- the same one I used to cut my [...]

I had a great time last week visiting ShopBot Tools HQ, getting CNC training and then getting my very own ShopBot Desktop machine. I made a video of my experiences there which you can view below. Angus Hines of Hines Design Lab also helped me out tremendously along with Bill to get me organized and cutting in record time. 2011 ShopBot Tools Roadtrip

I released my book a few weeks ago and this morning was interviewed by Guy at Ponoko… you can read about the book and interview here: http://blog.ponoko.com/2011/11/02/woodmarvels-volume-3-is-out/