[4DThinker]

Every other year or two I would have a student design a cabinet with large radius corners. A nice aesthetic usually. A challenge to create most of the time. The last time it happened it occurred to me I might be able to make the corners on the CNC.

The goal was to remove the top and bottom red rendered areas.

I've written up the process and considerations on my blog: here.
If you are interested in the CNC file in Aspire I've shared it on Vectric's Aspire-General forum: here
This is just one example of how the CNC can provide an alternative process for making a complex part that used to be a difficult challenge to make. Needed is just a rectangular board with enough cross sectional area to cut the corner from. I would draw up the end view of the curve first then tell the students the dimensions of the boards they needed to provide.

4D

 

[4DThinker]

Thanks TimPa. I just turned 65 and would have kept teaching for another 5 years or so but the administration decided they wanted to interfere with the class content. For 40+ years we've let the students design furniture, then let their design suggest what materials would be best to make it from. The workshop/class space was upgraded a few years back with more fabrication tools and combining what used to be a separate metals shop with a woodworking shop. Dictate was to make the students make metal furniture and in the process ignore teaching fundamentals effectively. Students are no longer taught the names of the tools/clamps they use. They are no longer taught species, uses, properties, or characteristics of the woods available locally. The result is some of the ugliest metal furniture with thick wood tops and no allowance for expansion/contraction between the base and the top. Basically the shop TAs and instructors now spend class time plus 2/3 weekday evenings and weekends making the students designs for them. Wood top with a groove pattern CNC cut on the top because that was the only CNC lesson the young faculty could come up with.
It was time to step away when the administration started ignoring my experience and wisdom gained from iterative refinement of the class content between 3 furniture design professors over 40+ years.
4D