Sneak Peak: Custom CNC Laser Cut Downdraft Table

CNCROi.com does a surprising amount of after-CNC production sanding and although dust is already kept to an absolute minimum, there is something our shop doesn’t have yet, a custom CNC laser cut downdraft table!

There are a lot of downdraft table options in the market, just like there are tons of tables, chairs and other equipment but nothing quite “fit” what I was looking for. They were either the wrong height, wrong design, inflexible to our production needs or just plain ugly and overpriced. A custom solution was in order!

The custom CNC Laser Workstation I designed and cut using our Austrian wide-format industrial Trotec Speedy 400 flexx has performed fantastically since I put it together. Custom furniture is like a good pair of shoes, they make things feel seamless to the point of not even realizing it’s even there. You completely forget about it while going about your day! That’s the power of custom furniture!

When we first moved into our new shop, that was about 3x the size of the old one, the first thing I did was get a big industrial sand blasting cabinet (more on that in future blog posts) and that has helped keep the dust down dramatically with our concrete and Corian sanding jobs but it isn’t optimal by its nature. A sand blasting cabinet also has limitations regarding material sizes that fit inside of it and the ergonomics are much to be improved.

Unlike the custom CNC Laser Station made last month, this custom CNC laser cut downdraft table will be made entirely out of MDF, both half-inch (12.7 mm) and quarter inch (6 mm) which is no problem for our CO2 laser tube (we also have a fiber in the same machine btw).

The shields will be cut out of quarter-inch (6 mm) acrylic and will be easily moveable to fit any configuration I need them in. The advantage to custom design furniture is that ALL the ideas you have can actually be implemented into one piece.

For instance, this will have a ton of storage space and as a result, free-up a whole section in the current CNCROi.com shop devoted to sanding tools as they can now be placed in the custom downdraft table instead of on various shelves and tables.

Having everything within easy reach provides the ultimate ROI!

The other advantage of custom furniture production is that we can be as simple or crazy as you wish, for instance, when I was in Perth, Australia, I designed and cut out the world’s first kangaroo inspired shelving unit! What’s even better is that since our design process is entirely digital and then cut using CNC machines, everything fits perfectly THE FIRST TIME.

There is no wastage of anything but electrons and better yet, it’s repeatable. Need a thousand kangaroo shelves each personalized with names, logos or even varying body dimension? No problem!

If you are curious about how this custom CNC laser cut downdraft table was designed, check-out sister company CNCKing.com with these two posts:

• Custom CNC Laser Downdraft Table: Design

• Custom CNC Laser Downdraft Table: Design (Part 2)

Material & Process Agnostic

Now, let’s say that for your specific application, you needed a custom piece of furniture made out of solid Corian. Could we use the same design approach? Yes! Not only that, we could also make the exact same piece of furniture out of wood, stainless steel or anything else you wish to have it made from. CNCROi.com is completely material and process agnostic, meaning we pick the best approaches to satisfy your requirements.

Of course, a lot of this will depend on budget, MDF is the cheapest material around and for our shop, we needed something heavy, strong (due to the way this table is designed) and durable in the face of a lot of vibrations coming from the sanding process. MDF is great for vibration dampening.

We are able to design a lot more than furniture though, I’ve personally designed hundreds of things from toys to ornaments to vehicles… watch the video of me building the wooden big wheels you see in the brochure below. I designed it because I couldn’t find one that was adult sized!

I later cut this exact same model yet again but instead of using our CNC router, I used our CNC laser and made it half scale. This demonstrates how well our design process works!

Looking to have some custom furniture (or anything else from Corian cutting boards though room dividers) designed and built for you? Contact CNCROi.com today!