Open Form Architecture Blog

The CNC Machine pro­to­toype at the SAIC, Chi­cago; Photo by DIYLILCNC

At Open Form we’re busy coor­di­na­ting our cons­truc­tion of our first CNC machine, the DIYLILCNC. It’s an open source DIY pro­ject de­ve­lo­ped by Ch­ris and Tal­yor — two staf­fers at the SAIC — School of the Art Ins­ti­tute of Chi­cago. The 3-axis machine has a cut­ting area of 12″ x 14″ x 2″ (x,y,z), but these li­mits can be pla­yed with crea­ti­vely. We have all the parts on or­der, and will post more when we have pho­tos of the pro­ject and our ex­pe­ri­ments. In the mean time, if you’re in­te­res­ted in buil­ding the machine, we have star­ted a post on the web­site for Buil­ding a LILDIYCNC Machine in Ca­nada.

I have been wor­king on de­ve­lo­ping a set of ef­fi­cient Rhino3D Short­cut Alia­ses (Goo­gle Code link) for Rhi­no­ce­ros 3D, ver­sion 4.0. These are ba­sed on the work of Max­wan Archi­tects + Ur­ba­nists in Rot­ter­dam, and their long-term de­ve­lop­ment of Au­to­CAD short­cuts that you can down­load from Dysturb.Net. I have de­ve­lo­ped the Rhino3D sys­tem in pa­ra­llel for ease of in­terchange bet­ween the two softwares.

The ins­ta­lla­tion is sim­ple, and fully ex­plai­ned on the Goo­gle Code page (link above). You simply im­port the .txt file and overw­rite the de­faults. A Mic­ro­soft Ex­cel file shows the list of used com­mands (and unu­sed com­mands for fu­ture de­ve­lop­ment). Feel free to make sug­ges­tions on further commands!