Fabricating Custom Treads for a Circular Staircase

July 1, 2020CNC, How To & CalculatorsDavid Wertheimer4 Comments

Fabricating custom treads for a circular staircase is largely a story of jigs, made and remade until they’re just right. I outline the steps - and missteps - I took along the way of bringing this nearly year-long vision to fruition.

Shakespeare Insult Generator

April 13, 2020Technology & SteampunkDavid Wertheimer1 Comment

Vain Rumpfed Flirtgill! Frothy Fly-bitten Lout! This creation combines 1950s era cutting edge technology - the single-pane display, a competitor to the Nixie-tube - with an Arduino in a simple oak box to generate those, and 998 other, Shakespeare-inspired insults.

Two Artist Collaborations

March 17, 2020Products & ShowsDavid Wertheimer2 Comments

I’m privileged to have had the opportunity to work with many skilled artists and craftspeople in my different projects. In this post, I introduce the amazing work of Jun Yang & Lucas Elzayek, with lots of photos of some of the recent projects that we’ve worked on together that show the progression from idea and raw material to finished product.

Lasers vs. CNC?

February 3, 2020CNCDavid Wertheimer22 Comments

Learn how to distinguish between laser cutting or engraving vs. CNC cutting or engraving. What materials lend themselves more to one or the other, and why would an artist choose one approach over the other?

5 Axis CNC Milling: It's all in the Software

October 11, 2019CNCDavid Wertheimer5 Comments

After carving out the bodies for many clocks and a number of coasters, I’m looking forward to adding a few small but unique architectural models to my product catalog, but those will be much easier with a 5-axis CNC. Continuing my earlier exploration to upgrade my CNC, an often-overlooked component is the control software; some software options cost nearly as much as a fancy new machine! I’ll share a few of the options I’ve explored for continuous vs. 3+2 (positional / indexing) milling; though there are a few dead ends if I want to keep it affordable, there’s at least one promising path forward that I’ll describe and will be pursuing in the coming months.

Choosing an Engraving Bit

July 23, 2019How To & Calculators, CNCDavid Wertheimer6 Comments

So many engraving bits to choose from; which is the right one to use? Did you ever expect to apply that high school trigonometry for engraving? In this post, we go through the considerations in selecting the size and angle of engraving bit based on the width of the characters and the thickness of the stock.