Hey I am new here. Im looking to buy a Shapeoko XXL next month(waiting on black friday sales ) for a project I want to run by you all in the community.
Anyway. I have a 1840s house with wood fixed louver exterior shutters that have operational hinges and shutter stays. My shutters are in terrible shape and need rebuilt. I am a painter by trade and have a very capable woodworking shop. I have been dreading making a jig to make the louver slots in the stiles due to the amount of physical time to cut all the slots for the louvers.
I started looking into cnc’s to see if they would be a viable option to cut the louver slots in the shutter stiles instead of me having to manually plunge and cut each one. I have about 24 shutters to make ranging in size. The largest being about 60” tall. Width is not of much concern since they all fall within the table parameters pf the XXL.
My question for the community. Would the Shapeoko pro XXL be a good addition to my shop for this project? I would use this machine for other projects but for now this is my primary concern. I am also curious how I would cut the louver holes on a stile that exceeds the the maximal working table length. Are there ways to do this? Like cnc half of the slots and then reposition the piece for the other half?
As far as my cad/cam knowledge. I was a MEE major in the early 2000s and learned SolidWorks and AutoCad. I have touched neither since probably 2007. I downloaded Shapr3D on my iPad pro and tinkered around with it last night. The turorials came almost naturally to me so. The cam software I would be very rusty on if not a newbie.
I am here to to learn. I think the carbide3d machine is my ticket. Please give me any feedback you guys can. I tinkered around with Shapr3d last night and after the tutorials made a rough solid of the shutter stile I was wanting to create. It didnt use exact dimensions but I was more curious on using the symmetry commands to evenly space and duplicate the louver slots.
I may be off mark here but these are slots cut out at an angle along the length of the board? Totally a reasonable project for the cnc. I think someone made something similar at some point. I can’t recall if it was here or Facebook group. @WillAdams may have a better idea of where to look.
Yes at an angle down the length of the stile(or board). I have to disassemble a shutter and find the angle they are at. I have a very rough solid I created on shapr3d that I could link to give an idea. Just not sure of how to link that.
That looks very easy. So it looks like carbide3d software handles it with ease. What about making these slots down a length of board that exceeds the working ability of the machine while not losing any accuracy. Aka duplicating what you posted down a almost 60” board?
Edit: I guess the statement of not losing any accuracy may be inappropriate. These are exterior shutters. But moving the piece to incorporate the other half for machining without having a noticeable visual cue that something seems off.
That would be known as “tiling” and it can be done — just add some mechanism for registering — since this depends on evenly spaced features, just make a fixture w/ a positive version and use that to move things in register.
If you’ve used those, even in your ancient history, you’re going to love Carbide Create. Super Simple.
Very quirky in some aspects, but pretty powerful if you’re good at visualization & geometry. i.e. coming up with creative solutions to achieve your goals.
Your other option for machining material longer than the machines capacity is to use the Shapeoko to make a router template for cutting the the slots. Then use the template with a router to transfer the slots your material.
Thats what I was doing originally. It’s incredibly time consuming to make this by hand. I was hoping using the cnc it would allow me to walk away and not have to tediously do this by hand. I have over 20 to build.
) for a project I want to run by you all in the community.
