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CNC compared to Handmade

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#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
I am Jason Loasching, a college student attending Texas A&M University-Commerce. I am tasked with writing an ethnography for my English 1302 class led by Mr. Radzinski. I chose to do mine over woodworking. I want to ask you one final question. You don't have to answer but I would appreciate it if you would.

• How does using CNC machines differ from doing hand crafted woodworks?
 
#3 ·
Don't forget about Shaper Origin, which is a handheld CNC machine that gives you the best of both Worlds. I personally own one and use it a lot. My projects start by hand, get shaped by Origin, and then are finished by hand.

I find that Shaper overlaps with hand crafting very well. Unlike traditional, gantry-style CNC, if I need to make an adjustment on-the-fly, I can make it right there on the router's touch-screen and not suffer any downtime having to rewrite G code.

If a material is not cooperating, I can likewise adjust on-the-fly without risking a robot completely destroying my project, the stock, or worse, itself.
 
#5 ·
Agree. Hand crafted has just a slightly different look. Can't say it is imperfection as some can be incredible, but it is identifiable. How the grain shows through when scraped instead of sanded maybe. A vague immeasurable, but more "human." Maybe it is the little tell-tale scribes from laying out the dovetails. Maybe the fit of a tenon that was carefully back-beveled and trimmed. Maybe in the design where edges are eased "just right" and curves are more complex. For more ornate work ( not my thing) with carvings, no CNC can match the look of a good carver.

Now one can always rough stuff CNC and then finalize and fit by hand.
 
#8 · (Edited by Moderator)
I think CNC stuff is fine. When people say "By hand" do they mean no electricity.. like a molding plane?
Or does "By hand" mean you can use a table saw, hand guided router, etc?
Because there's really no difference in appearance between a CNC made thing and a tablesaw/hand router.

Most people can not tell the difference between mdf and solid wood, so of course they can't tell the difference between a table top that was hand planed or ran through a power planer and sanded. or flattened wtih a CNC and then sanded..

How does it differ? When you use a CNC, you spend a lot of time on CAD drawing the part and on CAM generating the tool paths. Then you have to be careful to do all the prep work correctly (homing the axis, making sure the wood to be cut is secure).. Then you push the button, and if you didn't make a mistake , it comes out perfect.

By hand? Well, it's just a different kind of skill. You have to make sure the board is against the table saw fence as you push it through.. "By hand" is actually more dangerous, so you have to be careful. "By hand" can sometimes be more enjoyable as a hobbyist. It all depends. When I make dovetailed drawers, I put them in the CNC and they come out perfect in minutes. so I love that. Other people really enjoy cutting dovetails by hand and have invested a lot of time in that skill and are proud of their results. They would not enjoy cutting them on CNC.

It's all personal perference, really. I hope that helps.
 
#9 ·
Still plenty of "hand" work involved with most CNC productions. Assembly/finish can often be as complex or greater than the stock cut out. Of course there are plenty of CNC products that just are not realistic to do by hand (cue up the Duck's puzzles).

Items with complex curves in large quantities comes to mind. Some people like the tedium, others just want to be as efficient as possible.

It's all part of the world of flexible manufacturing. Consider the humble automobile. Still done by hand for small quantity productions of exotics, but when there is lots of identical parts in quantity, CNC/automation is hard to dismiss.
 
#10 ·
CNC and other computerized machinery has made competing with large cabinet outfits difficult. Some places employ cheap labor and produce cheap cabinets. There are always shops cropping up in any big city that will try to bang out these sorts of kitchens. Some places use CNC and melamine to produce low to high end European style cabinetry, which you can do without a CNC machine too.

High end clients will pay for one-of-a-kind work. They may not care if CNC was employed but high end work often shows hand work.

It's a big topic.
 
#11 · (Edited by Moderator)
I might think of it like music.

Musicians use the tools they need to make the music that's inside their head. For some it has to come from a computer. Others abhor it.

The rhythmic precision and pitch / tone perfection might be perfect for a purpose, or maybe it will lack a needed feeling and leave the tones flat faced and mechanical.

I think computer controlled machining has a place is in mass production and precision specialties like wooden gears and screws.

Some crafts can really be eye catching with the precise repetition that CNC can deliver on a big scale.
Yet, much CNC work is flat and mechanical, without human engagement.

Anyhow, my office desk came from IKEA , woodworking's king of CNC production.
 
#12 ·
CNC requires the design upfront, usually with exact dimensioning, and hand-crafted work is adaptive, with options to adjust a part to fit or desired grain pattern. Hand work can be done without digitized plans. However, CNC cuts can be performed with high-quality craftsmanship. CNC parts can also be made oversized, so they can be shaved down to precise fits. Similarly, hand-crafted work can be batched in such a way to be more productive than CNC. CNC productivity shines for standardized, plywood and panel stock, with CNC saws and automated material handling. But, one of the main assumptions for CNC is that the stock is prepared to meet starting specifications.

The other aspect of hand-crafted work, the craftsperson usually gets smarter and more productive with time, and can apply the learning to other, related work. I suppose AI is coming to woodworking eventually - but most of us love woodworking because of that kind of learning, and how our imaginations are inspired by forms in nature, the wood, and stories of our pals.
 
#13 ·
... an ethnography for my English 1302 class …

• How does using CNC machines differ from doing hand crafted woodworks?

- JasonLoasching
It seems you want a personal (cultural) description instead of technical. metolius hits it exactly right to me. Some of us like the process of making almost everything by hand, others of us like to get to the finished product most efficiently. Socially, there seems to be greater value in high quality-hand made, but there is also appreciation for the latest, novel technical advances, in this case CNC.

I had to look it up.
"Ethnography: The scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and cultures." - Oxford Dictionary on lexico.com
 
#14 · (Edited by Moderator)
There is such a thing as a price vs volume graph. There are two opposite operating points. High volume/low cost and low volume/high cost.

CNC (which I've used extensively and love) is the high volume/low cost tooling. The CNC is optimally used performing gang runs of small items (think a dozen routers in a grid on a large gantry). Smaller scale units can route multiple MDF panels at once. Economies of scale apply. The tooling is run by relatively unskilled operator. Long runs of identical items are the rule of the day. The NRE (Non Recurring Engineering) is spread over a large run.

CNC shops often have large staffs specialized in certain operations. Operations occur in parallel.

This is like swimming with sharks because anyone with the same rig and gcode can duplicate the work exactly and it becomes a race to the bottom on price and quality.

Hand work is done in a shop without dedicated tooling. One or two skilled operators (usually a journeyman and an apprentice/helper) do all operations sequentially and individually. Jigs are set up and torn down as needed. The operators are generalists and can operate every tool in the shop both hand and power. Production runs are generally under a dozen and many different items are crafted. Many items are "one off's", fully burdened for all NRE costs. Production time is variable, it takes the time that it takes. End pricing is wildly variable from item to item.

No matter what the economic conditions are someone has $$$ for quality work. If you have the skills, you can operate at the high dollar/low volume realm.

Most of us operate somewhere between these two limits. Not perfect work but good enough at the volume and price point.
 
#15 ·
I call BS on the claim "looks like a robot made it vs …."

There are crafts people out there, past and present, who take/took time to make their work look perfect, and pull it off. Too, MANY CNC products were duplicated off original works in, seemingly, in infinite numbers.

I am thankful for CNC. People who could afford to pay a workman for his hire can enjoy things they, otherwise, could not enjoy.

A friend has a CNC and using it is an art in itself.
 
#17 · (Edited by Moderator)
Two idea from above posts.. First was the mention of the word " manufacturing ". I'm looking at a simple keepsake box I manufactured as I type. Mitered corner with splines, inset top, etc. Nothing too crazy.
Second concept mentioned above was "economy of scale". Would it have made sense for me to invest in a CNC machine to make this simple keepsake box? Of course not. Now if was manufacturing 5000 boxes?
The tipping point, from a business perspective, is somewhere in between. Programming and using CNC is an art form in itself. I find fascinating. And it takes a lot knowledge and time to make it work properly.
But the analogy I use is the simple copy machine. Draw your ideas on a sheet of paper, insert into machine and hit print. The machine will duplicate the drawing over and over. However the idea on that sheet was "handcrafted " if you will. Hand crafted will always (thankfully) have it's place in our world.
 
#20 · (Edited by Moderator)
• How does using CNC machines differ from doing hand crafted woodworks?

- JasonLoasching
Jason you will find that on this forums there are generally two camps when it comes to CNC Woodworking.
1. Buy a predefined highly detailed graphic file and press the start button an voila'! You are an "artist."
2. A CNC is only useful To make high volumes of the same item over and over and over again.

Thus far, those are the opinions I see above. (Generalizing a bit here, I know)

I consider myself of a third, less popular opinion.
First, I am a highly skilled woodworker with 35 years of professional experience. I only began using a CNC in the last 23 years.

The first CNC machine I bought was for a custom cabinet shop who was trying to increase production.
Although the level of creativity was above average, we didn't really try to step outside the box much.

All programs were use once and throw the code away. Because our design software was highly automated (parametric) nearly all of the mundane operations were removed from the forefront of the work and happened automatically in the background. Joinery and the like largely took care of themselves and the designer is left free to consider the larger view of the project and the more creative aspects rather than the mundane.

I look at CNC as an accelerator of my creative process. I don't use a CNC to do the hand carving of a large piece, but I do use it to remove the bulk of the waste material in the blocking stage.
Blocking a large carving is time consuming and boring work. The CNC relieves me of that tedium and lets me jump over it directly to the fun parts.

Largely, we currently use a CNC to handle copious volumes of case goods, (also tedious and boring work) but every so often we use it to handle very creative projects that would normally be out of reach without a CNC.

Most folks here, (not all), on this hobby forum fail to see a CNC as a way to increase their craftsmanship, but rather choose to be threatened by, or try diminish the value of, a CNC in the process of fine woodworking.

My opinion is that, in the right hands, a CNC will amplify the creative process that is woodworking.
 
#22 · (Edited by Moderator)
1) A key, touched on above, remains the machine does not do it all.

- Someone milled and dried the wood.

- Someone selected the wood.

- Someone roughed in the wood.

2) Like the one Aj posted, merely that it was CNC'd didn't make it ugly.

3) Like the oak barrel staves I saw at a friends, some of the work was his, some was via his CNC router. The combo remains beautiful.

4) CNC is just an evolution in woodwork and machine work. If you want all hand crafted, toss the table saw, miter, router and so on. Hell, chew your way to a finished product.

All around us are copies of the Mona Lisa, or some other piece of art. Only the hypocrite would set his/her coffee down on a mass produced end table/kitchen table, then whine because someone had the money to buy a CNC and took the HOURS AND HOURS to learn to run it to make a one or two time project, before moving to the next one.

I have zero qualms about admitting my drawing of Mona looks akin to a four year olds stick woman. As such, I need all the help I can get. For me, that starts with an opaque projector, or a toner copier.

When I grow up, I want both a CNC router and a laser.
 
#23 · (Edited by Moderator)
We had $2500 CNC for making holes in 19" alum equipment panels using PC 693 router head and solid carbide single spur bits. Cut tons of alum on slow feed with coolant mist.

Had it automated to the point where you'ld draw a panel in AutoCAD, run the magic software, load a blank & kick off the machine, and drink coffee until the part was done. Sketch to finished part in minutes.
 
#24 ·
To my way of thinking, a "CNC" is a specific operation (computer numerical control), if you will. However, the concept of CNC is reproducibility. When I made multiple sets of built in closets, I set up a router, table saw, dovetail jig, or whatever operation and ran multiple pieces through it to provide many identical pieces. Handcrafting implies that you are making a unique item. If you handcraft 2 items, they may be very similar, but technically, they are not identical.

Carving a design is considered handmade. While the same design can also be performed on a CNC machine it is not considered handmade. The difference is that the CNC version makes the same identical thing over and over with little or no human involvement (the machine does all of the thinking) while the hand carved design requires a person to do most of the thinking.
 
#25 ·
Technically, the machine does Zero thinking.
It runs the code that a thinking person (usually a woodworker) created for it.

If you give the machine bad code, you get bad parts.
The machine doesn't think, "I wonder if he really meant to do something else" and fix it for you.

Maybe one day, our great grand kids will have that AI-CNC to do that.
For now, the humans still do all the thinking.
 
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