High School Students Empowered by ShopBot

ShopBot On The Road

Makers of All Ages — Come One, Come All!

15,000 people attending a Maker Faire over two days can generate quite the flurry of activity — something we found out at our booth at this year's National Maker Faire in Washington D.C.! On June 18th and 19th, our group cut, carved, and drew for two days straight to the delight of both young and old. Staffed from various departments within ShopBot, the team cut signs on a ShopBot Desktop being run from the new FabMo motion control system and ran a Handibot® Smart Power Tool using one of the apps that comes with the tool called ‘Smooth Sketch.’ Read more about our experience at the Maker Faire and see photos.
 

FS16 Craft/Facturing

The 2016 Furniture Society Conference, FS16 Craft/Facturing, was held at the University of the Arts in Downtown Philadelphia, June 23rd – 25th. With this year’s conference having a strong emphasis on digital fabrication, ShopBot sponsored the event by providing a ShopBot Desktop MAX for a workshop called “Exploring the Fourth Dimension” being led by a team from the University of Minnesota. ShopBot’s David Preiss shares his observations and some photos from the event on the ShopBot Blog.
 

Make 48 D.C.

As a part of ShopBot's sponsorship of this year's Make 48 event in Washington, D.C. this June, ShopBot provided two machines for use by those participating in the competition, a Desktop and a Handibot® Smart Power Tool. Engineer Brian Owen attended to serve as a technical advisor, operating the tools and providing counsel to those competing in the event. See photos and read Brian's post about the event on the Handibot Blog.
 

TechShop CNC Workshop

TechShop Detroit was the site of this year’s CNC Workshop, an event aimed towards the CNC enthusiast from a diverse perspective. ShopBot’s Gordon Bergfors and Jimmy Lucidarme were in attendance, along with other exhibitors with various items to demonstrate and sell related to CNC machinery from CAD/CAM software to machine parts and controls, but ShopBot and Handibot were the only fully assembled CNC machines.

The main focus of the event was to build a CNC machine. There were three different builds, of three very different machines, going on during the event, the idea being that you could take home a CNC machine with you at the end of the build. The machines offered were a CNC control upgrade to a manual metal working lathe, a 25” x 25” benchtop CNC router kit assembly, and a Delta-style 3D printer. There was also a huge emphasis on education and there were many classes, on a wide range of CNC related subjects, offered throughout the event.

The attendees were enthusiastic to be there and were very interested in talking about CNC. They presented some fantastic work and some of the discussions on what they wanted out of a CNC machine were in line with the direction that ShopBot’s new motion platform, FabMo, is taking CNC control. It made it that much more exciting to see them understand FabMo and how it works!

ShopBotters at Work

Heirloom Objects Commemorating Military Life

Tim Haenisch and his wife Lalane use their ShopBot Desktop to create a variety of military objects representative of the "new heirloom era." After Tim’s 21 years of active service in the Navy, they have an understanding of just how much these objects, and the meaning behind them, have significance to military personnel. ShopBot’s Thea Eck visited them at their business Command Performance to see their work and speak to them about both their inspiration and process. See the photos and read the full story on the ShopBot Blog.
 

Elderwood Academy Elevates the Culture of Gaming

Quentin Weir and Dan Reiss launched two successful Kickstarter campaigns in two years to get their ideas for gaming accessories off the ground as Elderwood Academy. Their two main products, Hex Chests and Spellbooks, are created via the use of some traditional methods as well as some more modern technology, including their two ShopBot CNC tools. To learn more about Elderwood Academy and how ShopBot has figured into their success, check out their story and photos on the ShopBot blog.
 

Traditional or Digital? It’s Not Either/Or, It’s Both

Salesperson Buddy Warner was a woodworker (and ShopBot owner) long before he ever started working for ShopBot Tools. Having owned his ShopBot 4’x8’ for well over a decade, he’s become more productive (and profitable!) with his woodworking and sign making by making use of traditional techniques alongside CNC. See some photos of Buddy’s work and learn more about his evolution from traditional woodworking on the ShopBot Blog.

Round Two: MakeLocal at the Autodesk Forge Developer Conference

ShopBot’s Bill Young has long been a proponent of communities coming together in the realm of design and digital fabrication. One of the ways in which he has continued to bring this idea to the public is with his involvement with MakeLocal. Some of you may remember the first MakeLocal event at the 2015 World Maker Faire in NY where 100kGarages collaborated with Opendesk to communicate the idea of the “New Industrial Revolution” to Maker Faire attendees.

When ShopBot was asked by friends at Autodesk Fusion 360 and Forge if there would be interest in participating in their Forge Developer Conference in San Francisco, the venue for a second MakeLocal event took form. While different from last year’s MakeLocal event, the same ideas of community collaboration were present, just displayed in a different form. Read more about it, and about ShopBot’s participation in the Autodesk Forge Developer Conference (and see some photos as well), in Bill Young’s blog post.