For this assignment I decided to start building a bench/small table for my apartment, using what’s left of my 2’x 4′ MDF board. Sketching it out I ended up planning to use all the material with nothing to spare:

I had laid out all pieces in Vector Works and took it to the CAM station, but the shop staff and I weren’t able to solve an issue involving the software not recognizing the entire perimeter of any of the outside shapes (only one face at a time would be selectable). I decided to just cut one part this time (shrunk to 3 feet rather than 4 as shown in the sketches to accomodate for the CNC’s 45″ limitation):

I quickly learned that the machine is not predictable when it comes to origin placement despite my best efforts 🙂 … The pic below shows how the cut was about a half an inch away from becoming garbage:

And here it cut an unexpected half inch off one of my sides (I actually wanted it to go along the outside of this side of the material which I learned is not the best way to go about using this machine):

Finished cut: notice the 3 screws down the middle:

After sanding:

In the end it turned out okay, but I’m glad I didn’t attempt to cut all parts on my first try, now I know to use material larger enough than the desired cut shape to account for the margin of error.