THE INVENTABLES WORKSHOP

Hi All, this is Edward. I have a little story to tell you. 

Years ago, maybe 7-8 at this point, I finished building my very first CNC machine. It was not named Shapeoko, you could not build it for anywhere near $300, and it was not assemble-able by nearly everyone. It was in fact, the exact opposite of Shapeoko. 

But, needless to say, I finished assembling the machine, and wired all of the electronics. After that I installed EMC2 (now linuxCNC). I tuned the motors and ran the test job. Success! I was in business. Right away, I wanted to cut my own part. I had already drawn it to scale in CAD and saved the file. Problem was... I kept trying to open it with EMC2 and for the life of me, I couldn't get it to open. 

Ends up, there is a *vital* step between the CAD part and the cutting part. It's called CAM.  I didn't know that. So off to the internet I went, scouring any sort of information I could on this so called "CAM".

I'll give you a run-down on the jist of CAM: …

Inventables started selling the Shapeoko CNC Mill in April 2012.  The response from customers has been humbling.  The Shapeoko CNC Mill is part of an open source hardware project by Edward Ford hosted at www.shapeoko.com.
In October of 2012 Inventables hired Edward.  This is giving him more time to spend working on the project, advancing the Shapeoko, and also helping us add materials, components, and tools to our inventory.  Our goal is to stock every material, component, and tool that you might need to build a product.  That's a tall task but we believe if we accomplish it we will dramatically reduce the complexity of designing and building new products.
You'll hear more about this later in the year.  We have some very interesting things going on behind the scenes.
Today we are launching something special for Shapeoko owners - the dual drive kit.  The kit makes it easy to add a fourth motor on the Y axis of your Shapeoko so you can cut hardwoods and aluminum.

Dual Drive Kit
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The Mamut Fruit Bowl by OMELETTE-ED is great example of combining cnc milled objects. Mamut is made from cnc milled beechwood and polypropylene, there is an amazing video of how it works here.



I would love to see a project combing ourwood and plastic selections!


See more of  OMELETTE-ED awesome designs at their website.

Espirale Lamp by Guillermo Cameron Mac Lean are prototypes that explore the different possibilities of MDF for lamps using a single continuous spiral cut with a CNC machine.

We have started adding additional thicknesses to our acrylic sheet category.  Today we announced the launch of 1/4" and 1/2" fluorescent green and fluorescent blue acrylic sheets.

One cool part about these sheets is when they are engraved or cut with a laser you get a cool effect on the edges and engrave marks.