CNC Router Plant Stands

My partner and I created 2 small plant stands using the CNC router out of 2 sheets of 2’x2’ 1/2” thick birch plywood for our Design for Fabrication course. We wanted to draw inspiration from organic shapes and plants in our table designs. We decided not to use any fasteners or glue and only use press-fit joints. This meant that we had to do several iterations of fit testing in our joints to get the correct level of tightness.

We wanted to push our abilities with the CNC and try out unfamiliar techniques so decided to do an inlay with red oak on the top of one of the tables.

Leaf Table

This leaf table comprises of two sets of leaf legs that slot into each other. The table top has slots in it which the top joints of the leaves slide into. My partner did the design of the joints. I designed the rest of the table. I took inspiration from these laser-cut plant stand patterns.

In terms of manufacturing the leaf legs were very easy to make. We did not have any issues with the CNC during this time because it was a through cut. The legs took 20 minutes to cut. When cutting the table top we ran into the issue of our wood bowing. This was an issue because we were trying to do a cut that partial depth and the bow caused the mill to puncture the tabletop. This meant that we had to clamp the table top down much better. Once the table was effectively clamped we no longer had issues.

Sanding and finishing the table took another hour. The CNC left a lot of splinters around the holes in the leaf which took time to sand down nicely. The table was coated in polyurethane to preserve the wood.

CAD Rendering vs. the Final Product

Root Table

The root table is also made of only 3 pieces which are press-fit together. My partner made the joints are I designed the rest of the table. I wanted the legs to look like branching roots coming off of the tabletop. My partner saw a video of someone doing an inlay using a CNC which inspired us to try an inlay on the top of our table.

The root legs were designed with the 1/4” end mill in mind. Using Onshape I created a base pattern of construction splines and then offset them by 1/8” on each side. When we actually programmed the CNC we used the construction splines and had the CNC follow the on the lines. Each leg took about 20 minutes to cut.

Root legs sketch in Onshape

Inlay Details

The inlay design was tricky because I wanted to make something that looked good but I also had to work within the constraints of the 1/4” end mill because we did not want to have a tool change. The sun design we settled on turned out well technically but because of the coloring of the wood, there turned out to be less contrast than we had originally hoped for.

The inlay took an extra 3 hours to manufacture with the testing, cutting, and finishing. This is the only part of our design that does not meet DFM principles. If these tables were to be manufactured at scale it would not be realistic to include this feature because it is too time and labor-intensive.

CAD Renderings vs. the Final Product

Other than the contrast issues with the inlay, our final product is very similar to the CAD renderings. The sanding and finishing for this piece took 1 hour after the inlay was finished. Much like the leaf table, the internal cuts needs detailed sanding to look clean. The whole table is coated in polyurethane to finish it.

Techincal Drawings

pdfjoiner (2) (1).pdf

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