cncrouting

A Bittersweet End to the Inaugural Cabinet Class

plan perspective of Ophelia's Home focusing on millwork
plan perspective of the millwork in 20K Ophelia’s Home

The spring semester has come to the end, and what a wild four months it has been! At first, the Cabinet Class endeavored on a new adventure into the land of CNC routing by setting out to design and fabricate the millwork for 20K Ophelia’s Home.  Typically, the 20K Home is outfitted with off-the-shelf cabinetry units for kitchen and bathroom storage from the big box stores, i.e. Lowe’s or IKEA. The quality of the cabinets purchases is usually reflected in what the Studio can afford. To improve durability of these particle board cabinets, we decided to create cabinet designs that would be both more affordable and sturdy. 

Despite all of the obstacles created by the COVID-19 pandemic, this has been an exciting semester filled with discovery and empowerment for the Studio as well as the students.  The first half of the semester focued on learning about the CNC router and its accompanied technology. By March, initial design for all of Ophelia’s Home storage was nearly complete, and the students built a physical mockup of their cabinets.

Remote learning, however, began at the end of Spring Break. Yet, the students continued to move toward a final design of storage spaces, which included the kitchen, bathroom, utility room, and bedroom closet storage.  This week, the teams presented a presentation of their final project: a book that explains the context of their cabinetry designs and a stylized guide of instructions on how to build the cabinets.  The class hopes this this books will be used to continue the exploration of millwork when studies resume in Newbern.  Hopefully, the adventure will continue very soon!

Thanks to all those who helped make this class a success, including Dylan & Keith from Wood Studio and John Byler from Dudley Hall’s shop in Auburn.  This semester’s great work would not have been possible without your help!  Most of all, thank you to the Rural Studio 3rd-year students who persevered through tough circumstances.  Great job to all!  

Route it Out

As assigned, the teams have been diligently working towards their cabinet designs.  As part of their assignment, the teams built physical models, or mockups, of the cabinet itself.  This is a very common practice at the Studio, which is used to test the fabrication process.

This means that the students finally get to build something in a shop class! Because a large component of this course’s assignment is using a CNC router, instead of traditional shop equipment, a number of the students ventured back to Auburn’s shop at Dudley Hall and CNC’d the cabinet pieces. 

Welcome Aboard the Storyboard

This week, the students’ five cabinet teams have been working hard on the design of their cabinets and of their fabrication process. To help students determine how their cabinets will be constructed, Steve and Chelsea implemented a design tool called a storyboard, which is a guide or instruction manual that documents the process, or evolution, of a built piece of work.

Storyboards flush out the order of procedure and give the students a method for testing the actual process of construction from start to finish. All of this work is helping the class move toward the fabrication of a built mockup, or prototype, of their final cabinets. These mockups will be reviewed as their midterm during the next weeks!

Auburn’s woodshop manager Jon Byler teaches the students how to use a CNC router

We had another special guest this week, this time from Auburn! Jon Byler, who operates the shop at CADC’s Dudley Hall, kindly took the time to pay the class a visit in Newbern. Because he’s an expert on the CNC-routing process, Jon is helping the students coordinate using the router to fabricate their millwork pieces. CNC-routing is a new and exciting adventure for the Shop Class, and Jon was incredibly helpful in giving an in-depth router tutorial along with some great advice on design and process.

Thanks Jon!