I’m excited about recently becoming a member! In anticipation of getting inducted on the CNC machine and laser cutter, I’ve been learning how to use CAD software and mocking up some pieces to a custom Catan set as a first project. This is going to be a “try lots of new things” project, and I anticipate learning a lot about the use of CAD, transformation to G-code, using the laser cutter and milling machine, and using enamel paints.
The general idea is to mill the internal hexagonal board pieces from aluminum (I saw on Discourse the miniCNC can handle aluminum, though I’ve only seen pics of wood millings, could someone confirm?). The edge border and number tokens would be laser-cut wood. Haven’t decided yet what to make the player tokens out of yet.
Each hexagon piece will have a pocket in the middle to receive a round laser-cut wooden number token, and pockets on the edges to hold road pieces. I plan on filling in the rounded triangles with enamel paints to create the resource markings. Here’s a screenshot of my most recent design, using a brick piece as an example:
Here’s what a finished board might look like:
In all, I’m going to need 18 of the patterned hexagonal pieces, and 1 unpatterned blank. I’ve worked it so 3 of the hexagons could fit at a time on a blank in the working space of the miniCNC. I’m still trying to figure out how to actually cut the hexagons out from the aluminum blank, but will work on that down the line. Ahead of getting inducted on the machines, I’ve a couple of questions for the @CNCtechs that could help me work out my design further in FreeCAD if you don’t mind:
- Can the miniCNC mill aluminum? If yes, do we have a preferred alloy to use (6061?)
- At a glance, does it look like the features in the hexagon could be milled from our machine and be within its tolerances? For reference, the radius of the arcs in the triangles is 1mm. The face length of the hexagon is 45mm. The cutouts in the face of the hexagon don’t need to be deep, only 1-2mm.
- any idea how long it would take to mill out the features on one of these pieces? There’s lots of small features, but they’re not too deep. I just want to make sure it’s not going to take something like 8 hours to mill out a single one and set expectations accordingly.
Definitely open to any feedback, as I’ve never done something like this before!