Drawing Desk

My project was an Adjustable angled drawing desk. I chose this project because I wanted something simple and functional. And although I was wrong about the easy part, I had a lot of fun with it. This project was done entirely on the CNC Router.

CNC Router

1/4" endmill

2-3 5'x8' sheets of 3/4" plywood - This could be adjusted depending on how you design your legs and table top, such as whether you decide to weld your legs together instead.

Look online for inspiration. What do you want your legs to look like? What kind of mechanism do you want to use to adjust your desk's angle? originally I was just going to have the desk be one piece sitting on top of the legs with the rotating pieces on the outside. But once I realized this would make the legs too flimsy I changed my idea to more of a picture frame type leg with multiple slots for different heights. Another thing to think about is how you want to do the legs. When I first started the project I was going to use angle iron for the legs but as I got more accustomed to the router I decided to go that route.

cut out a prototype to see whether your joints fit together smoothly. I didn't do this cause I'm dumb but you should. At first I didn't know how to do dogbone joints and was just going to add tolerances to all the joints I already had but once I learned how I realized how much smother it made everything. Another thing prototyping helped me find out was the thickness of material I wanted to use. I originally used tenth inch stock but it was way too thin which I realized after cutting out a prototype.

Dimension and build out your desk: This may take some troubleshooting to get the pieces to go together, such as adding tolerances and accounting for rounded angles.

One thing I very highly recommend is using dog bone joints. This will help pieces fit together properly by avoiding round inner corners. you can do this by making a line the same size as the radius at a 45* to the edge of the female part of the joint. Then make a circle the size of your tool and extrude

set spindle to 18000 rpm

set cutting feed rate to 144in/min

select contours in geometry

enable tabs

set your heights

select multiple depths

put maximum roughing stepdown as your tool diameter

ignore linking

Put USB into router

Nail down plywood

set origin

grab tool

click file button

select your file

warm up spindle with green button on keypad

click ok

turn on vacuum

be ready to pause

dismount part

use a soft mallet to wedge your pieces into place for added security you can use wood glue or nail pieces together

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