How to Make a Wooden Beer Caddy with your CNC Machine

This is a relatively complex project. We recommend that you tackle it after you've gained some experience with CNC milling.

Since the parts for this project are relatively wide and thin, good clamping is very important!  We recommend using at least 1 clamp (or screw) every 20 cm to reduce vibration and improve the quality of your surface finish.

The caddy is made from 5 pieces of solid wood.

If you feel comfortable using Autodesk Fusion 360, you can modify the project to hold more bottles or even engrave a logo on the sides.

• Download Autodesk Fusion file
• Download the G-Code

The caddy is made of 5 pieces, but 2 are identical.

The stock has to be 400x600mm, but you can also open the design and change the sizes.

We used beech wood for our stand, but you can use any material you want for this project. Please keep in mind that the project is made for 20mm thick material and all parts fit together with mortises and tenons. If you decide to use a different material thickness, you'll need to modify the Fusion 360 project by redrawing all the mortises.

Oversize your stock (+20mm on each side) to properly secure it to the spoiler board. Securing it firmly to your spoiler board will not only prevent your part from flying around, it will also reduce the amount of vibration during milling and thus improve the surface finish. Check out our "Feeds and Speeds Explained" article to learn more about how parameters affect your milling results.

We used a 6mm 3-flute flat end mill to mill our pieces. You can buy it directly from our webshop;

If you'd like to edit the Autodesk Fusion 360 project (for example, to use a different end mill), you can download it by clicking here. 

Everything has been grouped into a single g-code file, with a first operation to clear the pocket holes and a second to cut the contours.

There are tabs to hold the parts in place, so you'll need to chisel them out afterwards.

You can also open the design file and modify anything you want.