DIY CNC project - How to Make a Wooden Sled

This project is a relatively complex one. We recommend you to tackle this one after you’ve gained some decent experience with CNC milling.

The sled is made out of 17 pieces of plywood jointed and glued together. You will find at the end of this tutorial all the technical files you need to make your sled (Fusion360, Gcodes).

If you feel comfortable with Fusion360, you can modify the project to make is bigger! This is the maximum size that fits on a S Mekanika CNC.

The sled is made out of 17 pieces coming out of 3 panels of plywood. We thus have 3 Gcodes. 

• Setup 1 : Vertical legs and long sitters - 600 x 630 mm stock.
• Setup 2 : All the sitters and rear sides of sliders - 530 x 650 mm
• Setup 3 : Bent side of sliders - 560 x 630 mm

We used pine plywood for our sled, but you can use any material you want for this project. Please keep in mind that the project is made for 18 mm thick material and that all the parts fit into each other. If you decide to use another thickness of material, you’ll have to modify the fusion 360 project by redrawing all the joints.

We used a 6 mm 2-flutes down-cut end mill for milling our pieces. 

If you’d like to edit the Autodesk Fusion360 project (to use another end mill for example) you can download it by clicking here. 

Each Setup is made in the same way, we used panels of the sizes detailed earlier screwed on the spoilerboard.

Everything has been milled using a 6 mm Downcut end mill and the spindle should be set to run between 20 000 and 25 000 RPM as the feedrate is 2760 mm/min. 

Download Autodesk Fusion 360 and G-Code files here

Mekanika is a Belgian startup based in Brussels whose ambition is to make local production more accessible. We produce desktop machines for screen printing and CNC milling, which have been recognized for their quality and ease of use, with open source plans allowing makers to adapt their tools to their specific needs. 

Visit our shop to find out more, or check out our tutorials to continue learning.