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MatchSticks: Portable CNC System for Automating Wood-Working Joinery

242 points by ArtWomb 8y ago

blattimwind 8y ago
(A miniature horizontal CNC mill for cutting joints in the spirit of the pantorouter)
- gitgud 8y ago
  The [1] pantorouter by Matthias Wandel is an amazing invention. Anyone interested in woodworking has probably seen his YouTube videos too. [1] https://woodgears.ca/pantorouter/ https://woodgears.ca/pantorouter/
  - a2tech 8y ago
    Did you see he’s taking a hiatus from making videos? According to his YouTube channel his shoulder is in bad shape and he’s moving to be near his wife’s family.
    - monochromatic 8y ago
      I hadn't heard that. That's too bad--his videos are fun. I've learned a good bit from him, and I even built the box joint jig from his plans.
ph0rque 8y ago
One more tool I would like for my future garage microfactory!
VectorLock 8y ago
I'd love to make this. I wonder if they'll publish the code and plans.
- abakker 8y ago
  I hope so- I have a full size cnc, but this format would be great. I assume it’s grbl with a custom UI?
mc32 8y ago
I’ve enjoyed or appreciated this kind joinery, but never could do the job right (given limited tools, though that doesnt stop a craftsman). This is Very cool. Hope they Kickstart it or something.
theothermkn 8y ago
The whole project smells of YouTube woodworking culture. That's not a bad thing! It's just that the device itself reads like a CNC Pantorouter (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wZ1v4PIsYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wZ1v4PIsYI). They show a table-top workbench. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjqWvpdNbms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjqWvpdNbms) And, the final example is of "Korean Joinery" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4lOeUYoDME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4lOeUYoDME). None of this is damning. It just gave me a heck of a sense of deja vu as I watched. I almost expected stop-motion clamps to squeak by, a la Frank Howarth!
- monochromatic 8y ago
  It doesn't have much Paul Sellers in it though.
pp19dd 8y ago
For those who haven't done any woodworking, CNC'ing or 3D printing before, this video will give you a good perspective on operational details. Take a look at this video of a bandsaw vs a CNC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHfEVek7-r4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHfEVek7-r4 These two people don't hide any details, they expose you to how complicated these systems are, each parameter, each step and then show you man vs machine. Note the vacuum cleaner at 6 minutes. The CNC took 6 and a half minutes to cut the gear, the man took 8.
- jimnotgym 8y ago
  A couple of interesting points stem from this. (I served a 3 year apprenticeship as a carpenter while I was studying...long story..in all I did nearly 10 years!) 1) The vacuum cleaner. Routers turn wood to horrible fine dust. Bandsaws turn everything to bigger dust particles, and take a much narrower 'kerf' than a router bit, which must be thick enough to not flex too much and to leave room to clear the dust. Other traditional machinery like hollow-chisel morticers and planers tend to produce large chips. I hated working all day with a router for the feeling of duct in my skin and hair. I wore a mask, and had extraction and had an air filter... 2) Bandsaws pull down through the surface, which makes the top surface look neat, with no tearing. With a router, cutting direction is critical to this. Twisted bits can help 3) Sharpness. Router bits suck for staying sharp, especially in plywood. We would have multiples of every size so they could be sent away for sharpening. Dovetail bits (and others) are wear critical, as they wear they need re-adjusting. If a router bit is placed in a situation where it gets hot it will be ruined very quickly. Bandsaw blades are in contrast pretty cheap and long lasting. 4) The situation was comparible if you wanted one gear ever. If you wanted 100, I reckon the bandsaw with a clever jig could cut those in around half the time. 5) Bandsaws are quiet, low vibration and safe (because they naturally pull the work-piece toward the table and the guides serve as guards). Routers are loud little banshees (especially the big 1/2" industrial ones), throw dangerous particles as your eyes, if hand guided can snatch even when used with a jig (especially the big ones). I only do hobby woodwork now, and tend to find tasks that don't need the router to come out of storage!
  - monochromatic 8y ago
mauvehaus 8y ago
As it happens, I left software a year and a half ago to pursue and education (and hopefully soon a career) in woodworking. My feelings on this are mixed. Let's be clear right off the bat: this is not a production machine, and probably won't get any significant traction in the professional market. I checked out a local architectural millwork shop last year that does high end doors and windows. Once their rough lumber is milled 4-square, everything, and I mean everything gets cut on their 5 axis CNC router. Which has a roughly 8' x 24' bed. Cabinet shops that make a lot of drawers but aren't invested in CNC get a lot of mileage out of router jigs that cut pretty much foolproof dovetails once they're set the first time. So that leaves the hobbyists and truly custom folks. The truly custom folks are probably already jigged up to cut their joinery with a router, a Festool Domino, or other dedicated machines (mortisers, tenoners, cope and stick set-ups for a router or shaper, etc). At the very high end, or for one-offs, hand-cut joinery is either expected by the client, or still competitive with building jigs to cut the joinery by machine. Which leaves the hobbyists. If you're just doing woodworking to build stuff, I guess I can see the point of this. It (presumably) gets results fast. But, when you get right down to it, money can't buy skill. And if you're pursuing woodworking as a semi-serious hobby, surely you'd like to actually learn something along the way? The secret to good dovetails isn't a different saw, or a different dovetail guide, or the perfect chisel, or some other doodad you buy. It's practice. Ditto every other joint that this machine can cut, with the exception of a box joint [0]. Maybe I'm grossly misunderstanding the point of a hobby for most people, but I pursue mine to get better at something I'm not already doing, not to be a drone feeding a machine I don't understand. Raney Nelson put it thusly: "If you cannot already do the machine’s job by hand, the machine will outwit you" [1]. I won't start my own shop once I finish school. Just like software, there's things you learn in school, and things you learn doing the trade for money. I'd like to learn the things you learn doing it for money in an established shop. Eventually, I would like to have my own shop. At that point, I think it's an inevitability that I'll need to take jobs that don't pay enough to do all hand work. And I'll own a Leigh [2] dovetail jig, like most everybody else. And I'll probably own a Festool Domino [3] for loose tenon joinery, because that's basically the direction mortise and tenon joinery is headed at the middle of the market on down [4]. And god-of-your-choice help me, if I end up taking more than a handful of cabinet jobs, I'll own a couple sets of cope and stick router bits and a panel-raising bit for the doors. But I don't see owning a MatchSticks machine. Existing tools are faster. So as near as I can tell, the target market is hobbyists who aren't actually that serious about learning their hobby? Which I concede is perilously close to a no-true-Scotsman fallacy. At the end of the day, if they're going to take this commercial, is their target addressable market big enough to cover their R&D costs and the cost of actually building a production run? As a courtesy to anybody who replies: I'm heading to sleep (East Coast), but I'll check back tomorrow. And if you're curious what I do: I'm on instagram [5] and I've uploaded some higher-res (but still crummy) pictures to Google Drive [6] [0] I don't think anybody who wasn't selling something would seriously suggest cutting a box joint with anything other than a box-joint set on a tablesaw. Yes, you could do it with a router and Leigh sells a jig to do so [1], but a tablesaw is better in basically every way. And technically, you could do it by hand, but there would be a lot more fitting than for an equivalent dovetail joint with no actual benefit. If you aren't making box joints by the thousands, they're basically made to be cut on a tablesaw. [1] http://www.daedtoolworks.com/lounge-against-the-machine-daedlab-commandments-1-and-2/ http://www.daedtoolworks.com/lounge-against-the-machine-daed... [2] https://www.leighjigs.com/ https://www.leighjigs.com/ [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYW_9MgSp6Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYW_9MgSp6Q [4] I'm curious how Leigh feels about this development. I'm willing to bet they aren't thrilled; they make mortise and tenon jigs too. [5] https://instagram.com/teaandsawdust https://instagram.com/teaandsawdust [6] https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wQKGxaqWfRzNoc-vevIhd3BkgnHpkgbb https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wQKGxaqWfRzNoc-vevIh...
Animats 8y ago
The paper [1] is more useful than the web site. A key point: Rather than clamping workpieces into the CNC machine, the machine is designed to be clamped onto the workpiece. It is portable and battery powered to provide freedom of movement. That's the real innovation here. This is a little machine which works on the ends of large pieces of lumber. That's convenient. It's hard to work on the ends of long pieces with a ShopBot, which is a vertical spindle machine. This little machine could be very useful for wooden boat builders, who use tension joints. There's only the one prototype unit, apparently. It's not a product. Here are some dovetails being cut on a more standard CNC router.[2] [1] https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3173574.3173723 https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3173574.3173723 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDa4dQnnEyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDa4dQnnEyg
- mauvehaus 8y ago
  Chain mortisers almost inevitably clamp to the workpiece. Mostly because if you're cutting mortises big enough to need a chain mortiser, the workpiece is by definition too unwieldy to move to the machine. Biscuit joiners, mortising jigs for routers, and the Festool Domino are also hand-held tools, or at least can be moved to the workpiece. What they're doing is kind of slick, but it's academically slick. That router in the video you posted is pretty nifty. One thing that's to be noted is that cutting single pass half-blind dovetails requires pretty a very accurate offset between the pin board and tail board if you want the edges of the boards to line up when you're done. Getting the offset right on the fixtures is basically half the problem.
- jasode 8y ago
  >This is a little machine which works on the ends of large pieces of lumber. That's convenient. It's hard to work on the ends of long pieces with a ShopBot, which is a vertical spindle machine. A similar theme of "bring a small machine to the wood material instead of the wood to the large machine" is the handheld portable CNC (e.g. Shaper[1]) instead of laying the wood on a large 4'x8' or 5'x10' bed underneath a gantry[2]. (I've only seen demos of Shaper so can't comment on the viability of a computer guiding imperfect human motor skills. It seems obvious a CNC on a precision gantry would be more ultra-precise.) [1] https://www.shapertools.com/ https://www.shapertools.com/ [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=cnc+router+gantry+bed&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=cnc+router+gantry+bed&source...
kchhina 8y ago
Another interesting open source community driven project is Maslow CNC router [0]. I bought one recently although I haven't assembled it yet. It works on cutting large 8x4 boards. Another tabletop router CNC robot [1] is coming to market soon. All this innovation in these inexpensive CNC tooling excites me as it enables a garage tinkerer to play with woodworking projects. Edit: I am not affiliated to either of these companies [0] https://www.maslowcnc.com/ https://www.maslowcnc.com/ [1] http://www.goliathcnc.com/ http://www.goliathcnc.com/
notananthem 8y ago
Eh. Better to clamp the workpiece to something rigid. Much better to have steel pattern routers with templates and making new ones is loads quicker than programming. CNC is for toolpathing not rudimentary work humans would be better at
DannyBee 8y ago
Horizontal routers like this are neat. Wood is more forgiving than most materials, but the traditional problem in bringing things to workpiece is still the same - rigidity. While it doesn't matter quite as much for edge treatment that gets sanded, it matters a lot for joinery - the difference between a perfect fit and a very loose not working joint is 0.005 inches. (For a real cnc, that would be a very very crappy tolerance). The easiest way to maintain these is making very rigid machines, and the easiest way to do that is adding weight. This is why my wood gantry router weighs 1800+ lbs, and that is very light. I have a horizontal aggregate that can already do exactly what this thing does. For teaching people though, or for messing around as a hobby, I think things like this are fun.

242 points by ArtWomb 8y ago

blattimwind 8y ago

(A miniature horizontal CNC mill for cutting joints in the spirit of the pantorouter)

gitgud 8y ago
The [1] pantorouter by Matthias Wandel is an amazing invention. Anyone interested in woodworking has probably seen his YouTube videos too. [1] https://woodgears.ca/pantorouter/ https://woodgears.ca/pantorouter/
- a2tech 8y ago
  Did you see he’s taking a hiatus from making videos? According to his YouTube channel his shoulder is in bad shape and he’s moving to be near his wife’s family.
  - monochromatic 8y ago
    I hadn't heard that. That's too bad--his videos are fun. I've learned a good bit from him, and I even built the box joint jig from his plans.

ph0rque 8y ago

One more tool I would like for my future garage microfactory!

VectorLock 8y ago

I'd love to make this. I wonder if they'll publish the code and plans.

abakker 8y ago
I hope so- I have a full size cnc, but this format would be great. I assume it’s grbl with a custom UI?

mc32 8y ago

I’ve enjoyed or appreciated this kind joinery, but never could do the job right (given limited tools, though that doesnt stop a craftsman). This is Very cool. Hope they Kickstart it or something.

theothermkn 8y ago

The whole project smells of YouTube woodworking culture. That's not a bad thing! It's just that the device itself reads like a CNC Pantorouter (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wZ1v4PIsYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wZ1v4PIsYI). They show a table-top workbench. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjqWvpdNbms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjqWvpdNbms) And, the final example is of "Korean Joinery" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4lOeUYoDME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4lOeUYoDME). None of this is damning. It just gave me a heck of a sense of deja vu as I watched. I almost expected stop-motion clamps to squeak by, a la Frank Howarth!

monochromatic 8y ago
It doesn't have much Paul Sellers in it though.

pp19dd 8y ago

For those who haven't done any woodworking, CNC'ing or 3D printing before, this video will give you a good perspective on operational details. Take a look at this video of a bandsaw vs a CNC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHfEVek7-r4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHfEVek7-r4 These two people don't hide any details, they expose you to how complicated these systems are, each parameter, each step and then show you man vs machine. Note the vacuum cleaner at 6 minutes. The CNC took 6 and a half minutes to cut the gear, the man took 8.

jimnotgym 8y ago
A couple of interesting points stem from this. (I served a 3 year apprenticeship as a carpenter while I was studying...long story..in all I did nearly 10 years!) 1) The vacuum cleaner. Routers turn wood to horrible fine dust. Bandsaws turn everything to bigger dust particles, and take a much narrower 'kerf' than a router bit, which must be thick enough to not flex too much and to leave room to clear the dust. Other traditional machinery like hollow-chisel morticers and planers tend to produce large chips. I hated working all day with a router for the feeling of duct in my skin and hair. I wore a mask, and had extraction and had an air filter... 2) Bandsaws pull down through the surface, which makes the top surface look neat, with no tearing. With a router, cutting direction is critical to this. Twisted bits can help 3) Sharpness. Router bits suck for staying sharp, especially in plywood. We would have multiples of every size so they could be sent away for sharpening. Dovetail bits (and others) are wear critical, as they wear they need re-adjusting. If a router bit is placed in a situation where it gets hot it will be ruined very quickly. Bandsaw blades are in contrast pretty cheap and long lasting. 4) The situation was comparible if you wanted one gear ever. If you wanted 100, I reckon the bandsaw with a clever jig could cut those in around half the time. 5) Bandsaws are quiet, low vibration and safe (because they naturally pull the work-piece toward the table and the guides serve as guards). Routers are loud little banshees (especially the big 1/2" industrial ones), throw dangerous particles as your eyes, if hand guided can snatch even when used with a jig (especially the big ones). I only do hobby woodwork now, and tend to find tasks that don't need the router to come out of storage!
- monochromatic 8y ago

mauvehaus 8y ago

As it happens, I left software a year and a half ago to pursue and education (and hopefully soon a career) in woodworking. My feelings on this are mixed. Let's be clear right off the bat: this is not a production machine, and probably won't get any significant traction in the professional market. I checked out a local architectural millwork shop last year that does high end doors and windows. Once their rough lumber is milled 4-square, everything, and I mean everything gets cut on their 5 axis CNC router. Which has a roughly 8' x 24' bed. Cabinet shops that make a lot of drawers but aren't invested in CNC get a lot of mileage out of router jigs that cut pretty much foolproof dovetails once they're set the first time. So that leaves the hobbyists and truly custom folks. The truly custom folks are probably already jigged up to cut their joinery with a router, a Festool Domino, or other dedicated machines (mortisers, tenoners, cope and stick set-ups for a router or shaper, etc). At the very high end, or for one-offs, hand-cut joinery is either expected by the client, or still competitive with building jigs to cut the joinery by machine. Which leaves the hobbyists. If you're just doing woodworking to build stuff, I guess I can see the point of this. It (presumably) gets results fast. But, when you get right down to it, money can't buy skill. And if you're pursuing woodworking as a semi-serious hobby, surely you'd like to actually learn something along the way? The secret to good dovetails isn't a different saw, or a different dovetail guide, or the perfect chisel, or some other doodad you buy. It's practice. Ditto every other joint that this machine can cut, with the exception of a box joint [0]. Maybe I'm grossly misunderstanding the point of a hobby for most people, but I pursue mine to get better at something I'm not already doing, not to be a drone feeding a machine I don't understand. Raney Nelson put it thusly: "If you cannot already do the machine’s job by hand, the machine will outwit you" [1]. I won't start my own shop once I finish school. Just like software, there's things you learn in school, and things you learn doing the trade for money. I'd like to learn the things you learn doing it for money in an established shop. Eventually, I would like to have my own shop. At that point, I think it's an inevitability that I'll need to take jobs that don't pay enough to do all hand work. And I'll own a Leigh [2] dovetail jig, like most everybody else. And I'll probably own a Festool Domino [3] for loose tenon joinery, because that's basically the direction mortise and tenon joinery is headed at the middle of the market on down [4]. And god-of-your-choice help me, if I end up taking more than a handful of cabinet jobs, I'll own a couple sets of cope and stick router bits and a panel-raising bit for the doors. But I don't see owning a MatchSticks machine. Existing tools are faster. So as near as I can tell, the target market is hobbyists who aren't actually that serious about learning their hobby? Which I concede is perilously close to a no-true-Scotsman fallacy. At the end of the day, if they're going to take this commercial, is their target addressable market big enough to cover their R&D costs and the cost of actually building a production run? As a courtesy to anybody who replies: I'm heading to sleep (East Coast), but I'll check back tomorrow. And if you're curious what I do: I'm on instagram [5] and I've uploaded some higher-res (but still crummy) pictures to Google Drive [6] [0] I don't think anybody who wasn't selling something would seriously suggest cutting a box joint with anything other than a box-joint set on a tablesaw. Yes, you could do it with a router and Leigh sells a jig to do so [1], but a tablesaw is better in basically every way. And technically, you could do it by hand, but there would be a lot more fitting than for an equivalent dovetail joint with no actual benefit. If you aren't making box joints by the thousands, they're basically made to be cut on a tablesaw. [1] http://www.daedtoolworks.com/lounge-against-the-machine-daedlab-commandments-1-and-2/ http://www.daedtoolworks.com/lounge-against-the-machine-daed... [2] https://www.leighjigs.com/ https://www.leighjigs.com/ [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYW_9MgSp6Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYW_9MgSp6Q [4] I'm curious how Leigh feels about this development. I'm willing to bet they aren't thrilled; they make mortise and tenon jigs too. [5] https://instagram.com/teaandsawdust https://instagram.com/teaandsawdust [6] https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wQKGxaqWfRzNoc-vevIhd3BkgnHpkgbb https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wQKGxaqWfRzNoc-vevIh...

Animats 8y ago

The paper [1] is more useful than the web site. A key point: Rather than clamping workpieces into the CNC machine, the machine is designed to be clamped onto the workpiece. It is portable and battery powered to provide freedom of movement. That's the real innovation here. This is a little machine which works on the ends of large pieces of lumber. That's convenient. It's hard to work on the ends of long pieces with a ShopBot, which is a vertical spindle machine. This little machine could be very useful for wooden boat builders, who use tension joints. There's only the one prototype unit, apparently. It's not a product. Here are some dovetails being cut on a more standard CNC router.[2] [1] https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3173574.3173723 https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3173574.3173723 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDa4dQnnEyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDa4dQnnEyg

mauvehaus 8y ago
Chain mortisers almost inevitably clamp to the workpiece. Mostly because if you're cutting mortises big enough to need a chain mortiser, the workpiece is by definition too unwieldy to move to the machine. Biscuit joiners, mortising jigs for routers, and the Festool Domino are also hand-held tools, or at least can be moved to the workpiece. What they're doing is kind of slick, but it's academically slick. That router in the video you posted is pretty nifty. One thing that's to be noted is that cutting single pass half-blind dovetails requires pretty a very accurate offset between the pin board and tail board if you want the edges of the boards to line up when you're done. Getting the offset right on the fixtures is basically half the problem.
jasode 8y ago
>This is a little machine which works on the ends of large pieces of lumber. That's convenient. It's hard to work on the ends of long pieces with a ShopBot, which is a vertical spindle machine. A similar theme of "bring a small machine to the wood material instead of the wood to the large machine" is the handheld portable CNC (e.g. Shaper[1]) instead of laying the wood on a large 4'x8' or 5'x10' bed underneath a gantry[2]. (I've only seen demos of Shaper so can't comment on the viability of a computer guiding imperfect human motor skills. It seems obvious a CNC on a precision gantry would be more ultra-precise.) [1] https://www.shapertools.com/ https://www.shapertools.com/ [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=cnc+router+gantry+bed&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=cnc+router+gantry+bed&source...

kchhina 8y ago

Another interesting open source community driven project is Maslow CNC router [0]. I bought one recently although I haven't assembled it yet. It works on cutting large 8x4 boards. Another tabletop router CNC robot [1] is coming to market soon. All this innovation in these inexpensive CNC tooling excites me as it enables a garage tinkerer to play with woodworking projects. Edit: I am not affiliated to either of these companies [0] https://www.maslowcnc.com/ https://www.maslowcnc.com/ [1] http://www.goliathcnc.com/ http://www.goliathcnc.com/

notananthem 8y ago

Eh. Better to clamp the workpiece to something rigid. Much better to have steel pattern routers with templates and making new ones is loads quicker than programming. CNC is for toolpathing not rudimentary work humans would be better at

DannyBee 8y ago

Horizontal routers like this are neat. Wood is more forgiving than most materials, but the traditional problem in bringing things to workpiece is still the same - rigidity. While it doesn't matter quite as much for edge treatment that gets sanded, it matters a lot for joinery - the difference between a perfect fit and a very loose not working joint is 0.005 inches. (For a real cnc, that would be a very very crappy tolerance). The easiest way to maintain these is making very rigid machines, and the easiest way to do that is adding weight. This is why my wood gantry router weighs 1800+ lbs, and that is very light. I have a horizontal aggregate that can already do exactly what this thing does. For teaching people though, or for messing around as a hobby, I think things like this are fun.