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I've been thinking about wood CNC myself. What kinds of tools are used these days?

I have seen basically X-Y stages hooked up to a hand router, but I wonder if there are other approaches.

I have an X-carve, which is basic X-Y-Z stages hooked up to a hand router, for about $2K. I have one carving behind me right now (currently playing with generating sine wave and reaction-diffusion patterns in numpy, converting those to heightmaps in OpenSCAD, generating g-code with MeshCAM, and then rendering in wood).

There are also 6040 mills, which are similar but built differently, and shopbots, which are big but capable, plus a bunch of others. To me, the X-carve was the right combination of price, features, and support. I previously had the ShapeOko but it really wasn't capable enough.

Thanks for the tips! I've been doing something similar with Python + FreeCAD for FDM (3D plastic printing).

Wood is just so much nicer as an end product, though.

> I've been thinking about wood CNC myself. What kinds of tools are used these days?

Check out the https://buildbotics.com CNC controller and the https://CAMotics.org CNC simulator. Both are Open-Source. These are my projects.

Cool project! Thank you.

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