04-02-2010, 11:21 AM
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| | | Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: United States
Posts: 33
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As I was sitting on top of my house, looking down at my father-in-law cutting 2x6's for the rafters of the roof (we had a leak so we are replacing the roof), I got to thinking of how a cnc skill saw would work.
The machine would be a basic 5 axis machine. X, Y, Z would control the normal, A and B would control the rotation (180 degree) and angle (0-90 degrees) of the blade.
There would be a feeder on one end to handle various lengths of wood. You would load a feeder with 2 by's (I'm picturing a printer tray right now or gun clip). The feeder would have a sensor on it to know how wide the boards are going in (would actually have two, one as a general idea of if the feeder contains 2x4's or 2x12's, the other would measure the single board that is being feed to the saw so that you get a more accurate measurement).
The saw component would be in the middle and on the opposite side of the feeder would be a catcher.
I see two ways of input:
1. Normal CAD drawings. In my case, I have a model of my house and know, from a architectural stand point, what every angle/cut should be in every board to get the roof that I want.
2. Newer DIY tech coming out from the programing world would allow a user to take a picture (using a tripod) and, using my example again, then put a virtual board in place, slice the board in the picture using a touch screen monitor, and wirelessly feed that board to the machine for a test case. I can see people questioning how this could be done. I know that Google introduced some software 2-3 years ago that would allow someone to piece pictures together for a virtual room, and then accurately measure that room from just picture. The caveat was there had to be a point of reference in the picture, you had to know that something was a certain length. In my case, the point of reference would be a simple 12" speedsquare on top of a level. The level would give you a straight X and the speedsquare would allow for a straight Z. The reason for the 12" speedsquare would be for the scale factor. The software would recognize the speedsquare and know that it is a set 12 inches. From there, pretty accurate calculations could be made.
Where this machine would have benefited me would have been on the rafters. I knew that for my 16x16 roof and that I would need 12 rafters. I would basically "print" the rafters...Come back 15-20 minutes later and all 12 rafters would be cut and ready to be put up. Any odd angles would already be figured in.
In the end, I know that this is me being lazy...but so what? Isn't that what machines are for in the first place? A faster/easier way of reproduction?
Anyways, I just wanted to get this thought documented and out in the world...no comments are really needed unless you want to add to the thought. My next process will be mocking this up in autocad before I even attempt to walk further down the path.
-J  |
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