Recently I was at IKEA. There I spotted this beautiful cutting board. I imagined using it not for cutting vegetables, but the nice color, material, and weight convinced me it could be used as stock material for CNC machining.

IKEA KUSTHOPPARE

Machining Experience

I machined it on my self-built CNC machine. This turned out to be a big mess. While I did not notice any fumes from the plastic being machined - which was nice... the nature of an enclosure means well... that you remove a lot of material. So I found myself moving away a few hands full of shavings to keep the milling area clear. I sprayed water with a bit of soap on the end mill to try to keep it cool and not melt the plastic too much. All in all it worked quite well.

Also I need to admit that the CNC is not complete. I should really get around to adding a drag chain so the Z-axis cables are nice and tidy. However, the machine has been like this for a couple of years already and it works... But yeah, it could work so much better with the finishing touches.

End result

Ultimately I was left with this case:

The top and bottom surfaces are the original cutting board surfaces so they are quite nice to touch. Since the cutting board is 100% the same plastic, it was also good for machining. The material is very soft, so even the weakest CNC would be able to cut it. However, since it is so soft, the side surfaces where I made the deep cuts to free the enclosure from the stock were not as nice. I did not try to improve the surface quality much after cutting.

Once I have the new PCB I will show how it looks with the PCB mounted.