DIY Pine Bird Feeder - a CNC Project

This was a very easy fun little project. The outside cat food bowl kept getting pillaged by all kinds of interesting birds, so clearly a bird feeder was needed.

This was designed in Inkscape so that I could cut out the parts on my small 3040 CNC. After the feeder was designed the files were saved as SVGs and then sent to a program called Jscut (www.jscut.org) for the tool paths.

The wood was the cheapest pine shelving I could find at the local hardware store. The parts are just glued and then bolted together with very thin threaded rod.

The "feeder" design is just a small section of 2" PVC held above the bottom of the tray. A screen keeps the seeds from all falling out and from getting moldy. To add more seed the top simply comes off with the dowel rods removed.

A couple coats of cheap rattle can paint and we were in business. A lot of time wasn't spent on finishing, since this will be exposed to the elements I am curious as to how long it will last. This was fun to design and build, I have other bird house plans bouncing around in my head. Stay tuned...

The video shows the whole process. Thanks very much for taking a look!