Easy CNC Accessories

In this month’s “In The Labs” project, Todd shows us how to make 4 fabulous ‘must-have’ CNC accessories for your workshops. These quick and easy single-sided projects use Cut2D and VCarve to help you combine learning how to use your router or simply help hone your skills with making your own custom set of tools that work perfectly with your setup or give you something new to sell in your shop!

Todd will show you how he quickly makes these fun, easy to make a set of hold-downs, a useful tool tray to put your hold-downs and other tools in, a sturdy mallet and handy palm sander – all using recycled plywood, oak and pine offcuts lying around the Vectric labs.

Todd first adds threaded inserts to his spoil board to use as markers and fixings, which are really handy when lining up material. Using Cut2D he designs the plywood hold-downs using simple pocket and profile toolpaths. Todd then goes on to design the tool tray using custom shapes. Each pocket is shaped to house his dowels, wrench, machine tool bits/tooling and hold-downs to help you stay organized in the workshop.

He creates his mallet as a single-sided project using VCarve Desktop, building up the design using some neat shortcut keys, vector trimming, bezier curves and node mirroring tools to create a better hand grip and add character to the mallet. Todd finally machines the handle, mallet head and dowels in two different oak materials using pocket and profile machining, gluing each side together and adding some leather cord as a finishing touch to the handle.

Have a go at making your own tool set and help improve your workflow or organize your tools a little better. For details on how to make and customize our handy palm sander using the VCarve Desktop moulding toolpath, check out our Instagram page here.

This FREE project comes with the file(s) for you to download from your V&CO account. For those of you yet to try our software packages, why not download our FREE trial software with these project files and give it a go!

We love to see what you make, so try out one of the projects for yourself then share your creative inspiration on the Vectric Forum or tag us on our socials.

Happy Making!