Make a Desk From One 8x4ft Sheet of Plywood Using My CNC Machine

I used 1 sheet of 18mm 8ft x 4ft plywood and my CNC machine, along with some design skill to create a Desk!!

I challenged myself to stick to using just one sheet, reducing material costs and keeping the material list to purely plywood and screws!

Once I had the file and method worked out, I could batch produce these, for my own workshop and for a local small business to use for their office. Here I'll show you the steps of making 1 x desk and installing the 3 x desks which a local customer ordered for her office space!

If you want to see me actually making things in the video - I'm right here, click play and follow along.....then check out the steps below. Thanks for watching and reading gang! Ollie

1 X sheet of 18mm plywood. Various screws approx 30mm, a drill/screwdriver. My 8x 4 ft bed CNC machine with V carve software and Mach 3 programming to run this machine. Sandpaper to take off any wild bits of wood.

Here I set my 3 axis on the CNC to zero, to begin working.

I then screwed the plywood down on the bed of the machine, next I went on to my drawing package V Carve Pro and created the outline for my table.

Its approx 900mm x 1600mm and the legs are around 750mm tall (used my Ikea desk I had to hand for dimensions, as they have done the hard work with all the ergonomic dimensions for me!) I laid my parts onto the sheet and began creating the 'cutting toolpaths' ready to save and send to the machine.

You could do this without a CNC by drawing this up and then using a large printer to print patterns, or create your own patterns based off dimensions and create cardboard templates to draw around and cut out with a jigsaw or circular saw.

Run the CNC program - After I set up the tool paths, exported the file and loaded it up into Mach 3 - I was ready to cut.

Heres a couple of shots from my time lapse camera recording the whole process. it was about 35 mins of cutting for this, then I cleaned down the machine bed and unscrewed the original board.

I used a 6mm Compression up/down cutting bit for plywood and these are around £25 in the Uk depending on suppliers. Much nicer to work with than what I used when I first started, a 2 flute traditional router cutting bit!

I've got a Youtube video showing the whole process which I'll link to at the end!

In this step I did what every good worker does (sometimes I don't love it as much as other jobs) and I sanded down all the rough bits around the edges of the pieces.

CNC routers do tend to cut quite well, but sometimes can produce little ribs or lines if I have split the cut into 2 depths, which needs sanding back to make the edges smooth to the touch.

In this step I layered up a couple of parts to create the 2 sets of 'U Shaped' legs, making a structure that had double thickness legs gave the whole table more support and stability.

I fixed these together with a handful of screws and just lined up the parts, using an off cut to keep the little groove/rebate clear at the top - which will accept the support rail when stood up, see pictures.

Next I laid out the support rails and screwed these into place, so that they can easily be reassembled when I'm on site in the office.

Then I test fitted the top and made a few pencil marks to help locate the top when in place.

I think I did mark out and pre drill the holes with the CNC machine (can't remember 100%) but this would be the sensible route, seeing as though I've drawn all the parts up digitally, I could just check the layout and pre drill, knowing the screws would hit the support frame every time. Rather than use a tape measure, measuring all the gaps around the edges to the table legs if I were to do this the manual way.

Here I took all the parts to the office and began building up 3 x desks in total!

I screwed the frames together, flipped them over and secured the tops with a couple of screws into each of the 2 crossmember/support rails.

I sunk a couple of screws into the leg assemblies too, so that when you lift the table up to move it, nothing falls apart!

Heres a little video and the whole video is over on my Ollie Allen YouTube page - Link is right here to check it out, along with other videos I have. https://www.youtube.com/c/OllieAllen

Conclusions and Updates if were to build it again.

I would recommend putting an angle on your legs, this could be created by cutting the slot which connect the legs to the support rail at a slight angle, to ensure the legs are more 'widely stances apart'. I think I cut a wider support member for these desks as the original one was shorter and didn't give the legs any outward pressure, meaning that they could sway side to side.....not great when your working! Also I didn't show this, but I coated them in a hard wax oil like Osmo Matt clear coat, which protects against spills and stains.

Thanks so much for following along and I hope this was useful to follow my process for this project!

I know a few people may be sceptical and say that the CNC machine does all the work.....and yeah, you're right it does do all the cutting work, but you have to buy a CNC which isn't cheap! And could I do this without a CNC? Yeah of course I could, but it would have been designed with different tools in mind, and probably used more of the same cuts, rather than cut out each part, to allow me to do less work by constant rail sawing many parts out.

It was a nice exercise to keep material costs low, and design something interesting and still functional, and I probably spent at least 8hrs drawing and prototyping this design, and still have some revision to do! Let me know what you think of this design and my work! Thanks, Ollie