THE INVENTABLES WORKSHOP

One of the best things about CNC Carving is that you can create almost anything. But, this can also make it hard to decide what to make. One way to narrow your options is to create a theme and look for projects that align with it. One of our favorite themes is food.

You can design your own projects, or you can look to inspiration and CNC designs from others. Under the category of food (& kitchen), we’ve picked a few designs from our free library that we think are fun and are great CNC projects.

Beer Tote 
A popular CNC project for beer lovers &  carvers is this six-pack beer caddy.

It is a great project for beginning wood CNC carvers. Bill Childress, who loaded the design to our library (you can import it to Easel with one click), used hard maple and a ¼” router bit. But you can select your wood of choice (we recommend staying with hardwoods).

As you can see from the image of the Easel plan, there are 5 pieces for your X-Carve to cut, then you sand, assemble/glue, and finish


T…

Our nation is in pain. The senseless killings have caused outrage, anger, and horror. We must stand together for human rights, we must stand up for one another, and we must have empathy for the fear, hurt, and outrage many of us feel right now. 
At Inventables, we stand in solidarity against injustice, racism, discrimination, and violence of any kind. Our mission is to build accessible tools to help all makers generate income from their work.  This mission transcends race, gender, sexual orientation or anything else that differentiates us from one another.  We seek to help all people who aspire to make a better life for themselves and their families.  
While the world feels chaotic right now and there are many things we can’t control we can choose to focus on the things we can. At Inventables, we choose to focus on our daily work and sharpen our focus on helping customers make a better life for themselves by generating income.  Entrepreneurship will not solve racism and injustice but l…

Cris Felgueiras is an artist, maker, and content creator in Portugal. She is a multi-artist and love to make stuff that uses different media such as video, woodworking, sculpture, scenography, sound, music, and photography.   One of her creative outlets is the project GET HANDS DIRTY.   Using her X-Carve CNC Machine, Easel CAD/CAM software, and materials from Inventables store she designed the two player pinball machine below.  Each side is divided by color and material. To recreate her design you will need to cut almost all the shapes again using plywood or other wooden material of your choice and glue them in layers to make the full thickness of the pieces. She makes it at least 5 mm thicker than half the diameter of the ball.
If you are interested in learning more about this project you can check out the bill of materials and fine all the Easel files in the Inventables Project catalog. Below is a video where Chris explains how to do the project.

If you are in to pinball the Cactus Wo…

Jen Woodhouse is a self-taught carpenter with a fearless DIY spirit and a penchant for problem-solving, she offers in-depth tutorials that inspire and encourage readers to build their way to a more beautiful home. Her site is called The House of Wood and she uses it as a creative outlet for all things DIY and design, a place where she documents her adventures in designing and building furniture and tackling home renovation projects. I visited Jen and her family and saw her shop which is set up in her garage.  It was quite impressive and organized!  She has just about every power tool and an X-Carve CNC.
Jen's projects are very inspiring. She focuses on things that you need around the house but everything she does is beautiful. This project is a giant wall-mounted Scrabble board. It's the perfect addition to your game room! All the files to carve it yourself are available on her Inventables Project page and the full tutorial is on Jen's site.

This week Inventables updated the options to save cut settings in Easel Pro. Here's how it works: After your carve, Easel Pro users can save their custom cut settings, having them automatically populate for projects with the same material and bit combination. In time, your carve settings and post-carve feedback will help Easel calculate better settings for all users.Note: Easel Pro subscribers can take full advantage of stored cut settings by using the custom bits and materials in their Toolbox. Bits and materials in your Easel Pro Toolbox with stored custom cut settings will auto-populate for your projects. This streamlines the carve set-up process and improves your project workflow.Saving Cut Settings If you are an Easel Pro monthly or annual subscriber, your cut settings can now be saved and automatically applied to future projects. Whenever you select a material and bit combination, the cut settings used for the carve can be saved to your Easel Pro account.Your saved cut setti…

This week Inventables added some options to save Easel Pro users time in between carves with a new feature called "Park Here". Here's how it works: After your carve, Easel will display controls to jog your machine. Turn off your spindle and click "Park Here" to get the gantry away from your material so you can see what you made.  If you are parking with a dust shoe attached, make sure it's installed high enough to clear your clamp feet.


We also made tools to change the shape of text so you can design signs with decorative elements that go beyond normal fonts.

Check it all out by logging in to Easel.

Inventables has an incredible community of makers and small businesses that have the capability to manufacture personal protective gear.  Our customers are all over the world and likely don't have access to contacts at the FDA, CDC, or FEMA to get any of their designs approved.  Working with a few doctors and an epidemiologist we created this rating system.  Our customers and the maker community at large are engaged in the production of C3 and C4 equipment.

Crisis (C) Rating System - Based off the CDC Guidelines
The purpose of this rating system is to provide clarity as well as a quick guide to healthcare workers and patients on how to evaluate and prioritize the use of protective equipment in time of crisis.

Conventional Equipment C1 & C2
C-1 FDA approved personal protective equipment. C1 measures consist of providing patient care without any change in daily contemporary practices. This set of measures, consisting of engineering, administrative, and personal protective equipm…

Desktop CNC routers are turning the traditional workshop into a mini factory for producing niche and custom products. Inventables customer Nick Homrich uses his X-Carve to precisely cut woods, plastics, and other materials, to manufacture unique lamps and products at his home workshop, happily leaving his sales job behind.



The X-Carve he purchased is a CNC router kit, kit comes in parts and he took about a half today to assemble it.  The Dewalt 611 router is mounted onto the X-Carve CNC platform enabling him to create high-quality products carving and cutting them in relatively little time. The X-Carve desktop CNC machines is compact enough for a home-based workshop, and it is sold at an affordable price. 


When Nick and his wife had their first child, Nick stayed home to raise his son. Being a stay-at-home dad didn't stop him from launching a business—in fact, it enabled Nick to start his own business. Nearly 10 years later, Nick is still designing unique lamps and products at his…