An interesting take on desktop CNC

I quite like the idea of a cnc machine that’s smaller than the thing it’s making… at least partly because it can then be scaled downwards size-wise.

Here’s a variant that uses strings instead of rails

from ponoko

Which makes the maths a whole lot scarier, and I have a feeling that there may be fairly serious issues with precision… but it’s an interesting idea nonetheless.

It might be interesting to try a variation where the motors (which when on the corners will need to be synched, which could be tricky) aren’t at the corners, but are actually in the machine itself, which just uses the corners as a reference point. You wouldn’t need as many of them then.

A bit like the CNC router robot from last year… which impressed everyone then kindof disappeared… which was a pity. I was expecting to see a whole wave of them after that.

I mean that thing is really cool.