Cookie Cutter CNC
This project started with the objective of making a 2×2 plasma cutter. You see, until then, I had been painstakingly hacksawing all my sheet metal, and I probabbly broke 3 or more cutting blades each day in the process. It seemed like a no-brainer then to automate this process… or so I thought.
I quickly began deciding objectives. PDFs started piling up on material science, electrical engineering, mechanotronics, programming, and gcode. For the first month, I spent much of my time in school taking notes, formulating designs, and drafting parts. It’s so easy to get tempted to plan out every millimeter of a machine.
Finally, I settled on an acceptable design and began construction. At this point, there were only a few weeks of school left, and I wanted to share my work with my peers so I intensified my activity: no more basketball, programming through class and lunch, staying in the garage much of the evening. (I would’ve made more balanced decisions now) At this point, I began actually learning about machanical and electrical engineering, arduino programming, C#, SVG processing, matrix transformations, and of course, failure.
