Mother's Day Gift - Height Ruler

For Mother’s day this year my wife requested a family height ruler to measure our daughter as she grows. Since the X-Carve has a limited cutting area out of the box I had to get a little creative with the cuts.

I designed this project in Easel and used a V-carve bit to get the detail that I was after. I then separated the project into 3 setups, one for the first 2’, one for the next 2’, and one for the last 2’ All of these cuts had graduation marks at similar locations meaning I could clamp in the same spot on each setup.

For setup I used 4 Inventables clamps on either side of the board as my X zero and placed a piece of painters tape down on the surface to indicate my Y zero. This allowed me to unclamp the material between cuts, slide it down to the next section, and reclamp it in place.

Using stock feeds and speeds from Easel, total cut time was 25 minutes, and with my over-cautious checking and re-checking, setups were about 20 minutes. Next steps are painting, sanding, staining, and finishing. Should be just in time for Mother’s day this year.

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Very cool! I am assembling my xcarve right now; this looks like an easy Mothers day project!!

How does the software accommodate items that are larger than the cutting area?

I set up the project in Easel as 3 24" long pieces, so the software actually doesn’t know that it’s longer than the cut area.

If you’re cutting longer than the cut area like I am, it should be no problem as long as you are flat on the cutting surface. Once you start getting very long you should support the material accordingly. If you are wider than the cutting area the plates that the motors are mounted to will hit the material (something I learned from experience).

For supporting material you can use a miter saw support system like this frame and roller.

Nice job and great idea.

Someone tried to make something similar to those on Kickstarter not too long ago. However, it didn’t get funded. My kids are all done growing height wise, however as they start college maybe I can make one that shows how much college debt we are incurring. Not sure Mom will like that as a Mother’s day gift, tho… hahaha

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