Make Your Own Circuit Board Luggage Tags

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 …

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Using Your ShopBot to Make a Mallet a.k.a. “a Blunt Instrument”

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 …

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Former ShopBot COO Takes CNC to the Woodworking World

Interview from 2014 IWF in Atlanta, GA

ShopBot’s former operations manager, ‘head camp counselor,’ and the penultimate editor of American Woodworker, Randy Johnson, is out championing CNC to woodworkers across the country. As an enthusiast of traditional woodworking, Johnson caught the CNC bug and has become an inspiring proponent of digital fabrication, CNC, and …

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ShopBot Offers Free Training for Imported CNC Routers

Images from a recent webinar on flattening and carving a log slab.

ShopBot Tools is opening its highly-regarded webinar training to owners and operators of imported CNC routers. Whether you bought an imported tool on eBay, or purchased from a US importer of Chinese tools such as Laguna, ShopBot invites you to join us …

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The Future of Educational Technology

Say “Educational Technology” to a room of teachers, administrators, and vendors, and you will get many different definitions. Having recently attended the Future of Educational Technology Conference (FETC 2018) as a “civilian” rather than an exhibitor, I was able to attend workshops and presentations, visit the entire convention floor of vendors (387), and stop …

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Bill Young’s Dirty Digital Jobs Tour: Visiting Rural Studio

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 …

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Wally Quanstrom: retired but very busy with his ShopBot

Arizona Cardinals sign made with ShopBot PRSalpha CNC

Wally Quanstrom retired as a senior executive at BP awhile back, and has thoroughly enjoyed his recent years designing and making any number of creative projects with the help of his ShopBot PRSalpha CNC tool. “My friend Harry Warren worked with an early CNC tool years …

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Sharing can be hard work!

From the time we first started, sharing has been an important part of ShopBot’s DNA. The files to build a ShopBot were originally released by Ted Hall as shareware and there have been a steady stream of project files available since then. The fabrication files for one of my first projects, “Honey’s Canoe,” have …

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Machining 3D Scans with a ShopBot CNC Machine

On a recent Professional Development session (PD) at the Chevron FabLab at California State University Bakersfield, Caroline McEnnis and Sallye Coyle of TIES (www.TIESTEACH.org) spent three days working with teachers, interns and staff to give them more experience with the digital fabrication tools and electronic components available in their Lab. Caroline had the attendees …

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Visionary Effects’ interdisciplinary portfolio the work of one person

“My goal has always been to grow the business slowly and naturally,” reflects Dan Thomson.

Visionary Effects’ portfolio looks like a design-build team of 4 or 5 people each possessing varying skills, similar to many interdisciplinary studios. But in actuality, it is only Dan Thomson: owner, designer, fabricator, problem solver and animatronics guru.

Dan …

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