Matt Hertel and John Allwine will host the Hack Chat on Wednesday, August 26, 2020 at noon Pacific Time.
Time zones got you down? Here's a handy time converter!
Once limited to multi-million dollar machines on the floors of cavernous factories, CNC technology has moved so far down scale in terms of machine size that it's often easy to lose track of where it pops up. Everything from 3D-printers to laser engravers use computer numeric control to move a tool to some point in three-dimensional space, and do it with unmatched precision and reproducibility. CNC has gotten so pervasive that chances are pretty good that there's a CNC machine of some sort pretty close to everyone reading this, with many of those machines being home brew designs. That's the backstory of Pocket NC, a company that was literally started in a one-bedroom apartment in 2011 by Matt and Michelle Hertel. After a successful Kickstarter that delivered 100 of their flagship five-axis desktop CNC mills to backers, they geared up for production and now turn out affordable machine tools for the masses. We've even seen some very complex parts made on these mills show up in projects we've featured.
For this Hack Chat, we'll be joined by Pocket NC CTO and co-founder Matt Hertel and John Allwine, who recently joined the company as Principal Software Engineer. We'll discuss not only Pocket NC's success and future plans, but the desktop CNC landscape in general. Drop by with your questions regarding both the hardware and the software side of CNC, about turning an idea into a business, and where the CNC world specifically and next-generation manufacturing in general will be heading in the future.
Funny you mention coordination - I don't think people realize how much of a skill manual machining really is. I really respect it, and hope to achieve some semblance of skill someday, but I'm glad CNC is there to back me up.
