July 29, 2016

Going from a drawing on your computer to a real object in your hand can be a difficult process. While tools like laser cutters and 3D printers have come down in price and have gone up in ease of use, CNC milling has been one of the more challenging machines to put on a desktop.

While the fact that you can get production quality parts from virtually any material may be an awesome feature to have for engineering firms and small businesses, the need for incredibly robust mechanics and complicated set-up and programming procedures has made desktop CNCing a late bloomer in the low cost rapid prototyping industry. With the emergence of low cost machines like the Shapeoko and the X Carve, Nomad and Carvey, as well as the newly developed Sienci Mill One, it’s easier than ever to put a CNC machine on your desktop.

Our team at Sienci Labs brought the Sienci Mill One to Communitech to run a workshop with one our our clients, Medella Health, to show how their hardware engineers could take their designs and ideas and produce them using the machine. Medella Health develops next generation biosensors and electronics, to monitor our health and change the way we take care of ourselves.

With programs like Onshape and Kiri:Moto, we were able to create teflon flow cell sensors that retail for thousand dollars each, and create prototypes that would take weeks to fabricate and cost thousands of dollars through out-of-house firms. With deskop CNC machines like the Sienci Mil One, companies like Medella Health can create a wide number of things at a fraction of the cost and time. Not only that, Onshape’s easy to use interface makes learning the software simple for both seasoned CAD warriors and brand new users, so that companies can get their engineers onto the platform painlessly.

We’re excited to be on the forefront of changing the way we turn digital designs into real physical objects, and technologies like browser based CAD and CAM, as well as low cost rapid prototyping tools will change the way we create.