Recovery of scrap wood

I am very new to the Maslow concept and forum. I have been woodworker for almost 35 years. I would purchase the kit for this machine today if it were available. One thing I do not see is a design to recover the scrap wood. Most woodworkers keep scrap if it is over a certain size. I would think this machine would do a great job of making a dog bone pattern (male and female) for gluing up the scraps into a new sheet of plywood??

1 Like

Plywood doesn’t glue edge-to-edge very well. You’re only going to get long grain contact on every other layer and in very thin areas. (The end grain contact has no appreciable strength when glued.

Even if you overcome the risk of separation by some mechanical means (your dogbone idea) you’ve lost your rigidity along any seams.

Typically in the CNC world, we do our best to nest the individual pieces in order to conserve material and minimize waste. But sometimes it just can’t be avoided… large scraps can still be cut; you just have to mount it on the backer piece securely and carefully define the zero point before cutting.

1 Like

I agree with you about plywood on end grain but I think it depends on what you are making and the thickness of the plywood. I generally use 3/4 in or metric equivalent. Many of the designs I have seen are for decorative purpose which I feel would work.

It would be nice if there was a smple way to reduce scraps to a minimum, Since CNS allows for organic shapes it also tends to create more unused material, and that in it’s turn creates stuff hat consumes space.

I think we should make his topic come back every so often to remind us to keep the waste to a minimum.

Sawing rectangles will always the path to less waste. waste material can eventually be used as sacrificial material behind the worksheet. but i’m not sure how practical that is

1 Like

There are lots of tools out there that can help you nest shapes together to
minimize waste.

Would be cool if we could make a picture of any odd shaped peice of wood. then detect the grain direction and overlay the shape in GC so that smaller parts can be cut from small scrap, wile still having control of visual aspects like the woodgrain.

See instantly if it can be cut from that scrap

This also needs ways to clamp those materials in a way that router bits can’t get damaged.
I’m probably waaaaay ahead of time again… :slight_smile:

1 Like

That’s more suited to the CAM software or even the human designer rather than grafting it onto GC. It’s an awful lot of code for a lightweight app.

Detecting grain direction and aligning parts for maximum strength in a selected axis would be pretty cool, but who/what decides what that axis is? What about knits and grain direction changes? Or what if you’re interested in the appearance rather than strength? That’s a few generations of AI off, and the singularity may have happened by then. Pretty complicated stuff even ignoring the robot overlord aspect

That’s why it would make sense to me to have it in GC.

The machinist has a bin of plywood scraps and a file that needs to be cut from let say 22mm plywood and with a visual need for the grain to be straight with a cutting line. Then snap a picture superimpose the workfile, rotate to match, does it fit? press START. does it not fit > try next piece of scrap.

It would make sense to have some simple solution to make optimal use of scraps. Mainly to reduce the amount of scrap. Since disposal is also an issue.

Two words. Wood stove. Works great here, better in a couple months.

Our high school has an adult shop every week. The kids throw out an incredible amount of usable hardwood scraps. I bring them home by the box full, then wonder what I’m going to do with them, or where I’m going to put them all. Just made a dozen maple blocks for the in-progress granddaughter at the impending mom’s request.

2 Likes

Sure but why burn scrap if you still can make usefull parts out of it?

Just needs a tool to make that more practical.

It takes a tree years to grow big, but only a few minutes to burn and give a little heat

1 Like

Well, I’ve got over 5000 cubic feet of mostly soft maple waiting to give off about 3 winters worth of heat, and 50 acres more to selectively harvest when those are gone. Rather than being wasted all that cutting grows more wood faster. Carbon neutral renewable fuel if you prefer that, big savings of purchased fuel $ otherwise. Along with all those boxes of scrap waiting for their turn at the power tools.

The real point is that the mark 1 eyeball still does the layout task better than software on odd shaped pieces, even if somebody had the time to pursue it. Or just cut them into at least 5/8 x 5/8 x 2 1/2 pieces and turn some pens

My thought is to put the pen in and sketch the cut to find the position of the scrap

Your high school has an adult shop? Very liberal high school lol :yum:

More like a teacher willing to stay. He has time to work on his own projects, and his wife and several of his kids (he has quite a few) usually come. Plus we chip in a few bucks every night. Usually 5 to 8 people there, and they let us use the local hardwood stash at their cost.

Look forwards to it every week