In March of 1999, a small group of ShopBot owners and other folks curious about CNC met in Bill Young’s shop on the coast of Virginia for the first of what was to become “ShopBot Camps.” Although these informal gatherings of ShopBot owners were sponsored by ShopBot, they were never intended to be sales tools, …
Continue reading >>> We’re going back to Camp!
If you’re like me you hate the paper tags that transportation services give you to identify your bags when you travel. Recently I decided to make myself some that were more durable and would look WAY cooler.
I dug around in the shop and found some machinable circuit board blanks that were left over …
Continue reading >>> Make Your Own Circuit Board Luggage Tags
No matter what kind of work you do, occasionally you’ll need a “blunt instrument”–something you can use to pound on things. This is my version. I’ve made a bunch of them over the years out of odd corners of sheets of ½” plywood I was cutting, but all the parts fit nicely on a …
Continue reading >>> Using Your ShopBot to Make a Mallet a.k.a. “a Blunt Instrument”
At ShopBot, we’re understandably passionate about making things with CNC machines and about the power of digital fabrication tools. We’re always looking for ways to help show what these amazing tools can do, and for items that are made with a ShopBot that showcase several of the processes that a ShopBot tool can handle. …
Continue reading >>> Prototype to Production: A Case Study
In the Fall of 2011 we were setting up the ShopBot booth at the NY Maker Faire and noticed some interesting plywood furniture across from us. It had obviously been fabricated on a CNC machine, with dogbones in the inside corners (which the designers called “snigglets”) and engravings on the tops to describe the …
Continue reading >>> Catching up with AtFAB
Shelter 2.0, the Open Design transitional housing design created by Bill Young and Robert Bridges, has just made the “release” files available for a new 8’x8′ design that not only reduces the materials needed, but includes a lot of small changes to make them easier to assemble and less hardware-dependent. You may have seen early …
Continue reading >>> Shelter 2.0 Gets a Boost from Vectric
One of the fortunate coincidences for my trip to Austin was that Wayne Locke’s CNC User Group was the weekend before SxSWEdu and SxSWCreate. Wayne’s gatherings are, by far, the longest running gatherings of ShopBotters and others that are interested in all things CNC-related. This year, as always, it was held in his shop behind his …
Continue reading >>> Wayne Locke’s User Group
First, let me give you a little background. In 2008, I drove my camper from my home in VA to Austin, TX with a couple of friends and collaborators, heading to the Austin Maker Faire to build a digitally fabricated shed at the Faire. On our way through Alabama we stopped at Rural Studio in Newbern …
Continue reading >>> Bill Young’s Dirty Digital Jobs Tour: Visiting Rural Studio
The next stop on my Dirty Digital Jobs tour was outside of Bell, Florida to visit Tim Lucas, owner of Tim Lucas Custom Woodworks. It’s the first time I had met Tim, but had read his posts on the ShopBot Forum, so I felt like I knew him already. It was a beautiful drive, …
Continue reading >>> Bill Young’s Dirty Digital Jobs Tour: Visiting Tim Lucas
After a long drive from my home in Virginia to Gainesville, FL, I was anxious to get moving and do some visiting. It was a beautiful day, mid 70’s and blue skies, as I headed to Melrose, FL to visit instrument maker David Beede. I’ve known David and his wife Julie for many years, …
Continue reading >>> Bill Young’s Dirty Digital Jobs Tour: Visiting David Beede
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