It’s been almost six years since we got our rotary axis MultiCam CNC router. I did a few projects with it when it was new but the software had a little catching up to do back then. Our good friend Jeff Hartman was here this past week and gave us a few lessons with the latest edition of EnRoute software. It now is a whole lot easier to route complex files on the fancy machine. With a couple of quick lessons under our belt it was time to fire the machine up with a REAL project! Peter has been itching to route the two figureheads which will be mounted above the bed in the North Star suite of the Hazelnut Inn. He glued up a massive, eighteen inch diameter block of Precision Board. It was so heavy it took four of us to lift it onto the rotary CNC. Peter loaded the file into the computer and we pushed the GO button! Routing in the fourth axis was a lot like routing for the first time more than a dozen years ago. It was a little nerve wracking but pure magic to see the dimensional piece emerge from the block. There were many things that could possibly go wrong - especially with an unproven file. We ran into a few challenges along the way but eight hours later we had the ten rough passes done and it looked great! We’ll fire the router up again for the final finish pass another day.
