Experimenting with an Art Form

Painted Relief, or Painted Bas-Relief, is an method that dates to the beginning of art history. It’s not an art form that gets a lot of attention. But given my interests and the tools I have at hand, it’s been one that I’ve wanted to explore for years (admittedly, suggesting this project is ‘art’ may …

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Only a Little Late Getting Started …

Sketchup model of Bill’s Exmore, VA shop.

Here’s the street view.

Well, I’m only about a month late getting started on my MAKEcation! I’ve been bogged down by all those small projects at ShopBot that just seemed too important to leave unfinished. Bill Young and I also spent some time on developing resource …

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Plotting a MAKEcation …

ShopBot has been keeping me pretty busy … for years. It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a real vacation. Well … I’m not really the type that relaxes just doing nothing, but I have been wanting to take some time to do something a little different for me.

Different would be using a …

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For the New Economic Reality: A Shifting Emphasis to Local Production

A Woodworking Economic Perspective

It was just a few weeks ago that we returned from the AWFS Woodworking Trade Show in Las Vegas. I had been looking forward to the show as an opportunity to get a pulse on what is happening with ShopBotters, woodworkers, and the economy. Let me first note that the show …

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Cabinet Software: Amazing New Opportunity for ShopBotters

The Big News!

Over the last several months we’ve been working on what we believe will be an amazing new resource/capability for ShopBotters who are professional cabinetmakers or furniture makers. That resource is eCabinets — a leading design and production system for cabinets and furniture. eCabinets is a groundbreaking concept owned and developed by Thermwood. …

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Fab Assembler

Recently, Wired Magazine posted a blog article about a “FabLab” that was being set up in Jalalabad Afganistan. Front and center is a picture of the Lab’s ShopBot. The article mentions Amy Sun who is a primary collaborator of Neil Gershenfeld in the FabLab movement (MIT Media Lab and author of: FAB: The Coming …

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Vista Views II: Setting Up Your Vista (or XP) Computer for ShopBot; My Preferences

Screen Display

Whether you are Running XP or Vista, you can configure the layout of ShopBot Software windows to your own preferences. The main Console Display of for inputting Commands and viewing running files can be sized, positioned, or even hidden if all you need to do is to start files running. The Preview Screen …

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"100,000 Garages …"

Well, maybe not my shop …

I note in a recent Make Magazine Blog that Make‘s publisher Dale Dougherty sat forward in his seat about the same time I did during Tuesday night’s presidential debates. Tom Brokaw had just asked whether, in order to solve the energy and climate crisis, we should support …

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Vista Views I: Everybody Needs to Vent a Little …

Vista’s “Flip” view of open programs

At our ShopBot Training in Durham last week, I was asked what I thought about Microsoft’s Vista operating system and about using it with ShopBots. So I’m taking that as my opportunity to do a little venting about Vista, which in the final analysis, is something that …

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The MoMA Home Delivery Exhibit [House Finished]

I got the chance to visit the Museum of Modern Art’s “Home Delivery” show just after it opened in July with my family. We had a great time visiting all 5 of the houses, and it was pretty amazing to see the ShopBot-Cut house sitting right there in the middle of Manhattan (see story …

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