CNC scissor chair

"CNC + plywood = furniture. Search instructables and you'll come up with over 47,000 results for "CNC furniture." But for the great majority of CNC machines -- the 2-1/2 axis CNC routers that can move only in X, Y, and Z (no tilting or rotating controllers) -- a very specific condition has come to be part of almost all projects that result: the orthogonal joint. The orthogonal joint, essentially a product of the needs for tightly-fitting "notches" to fit together with friction, is a defining characteristic of furniture made this way.

This project, the "Scissor Chair," takes its design inspiration from the non-orthogonal joint cut on a machine capable of cutting only orthogonal (non-beveled) profiles. The finished chair is as purely a CNC project as I could manage: it requires exactly one sheet of standard 1/2" plywood, no extra parts, no hardware, no glue, and no other tools (except maybe a mallet to show it who's boss).

The Scissor Chair will be one of the first chairs available for purchase through Fabsie, a new website aimed at letting people buy highly designed small-run furniture anywhere in the world by connecting buyers with local fabbers and digital designers from all over. James McBennett, Fabsie's founder, made the world's second scissor chair. He is working to smooth out the fabrication process to open up the design everywhere!

More and larger photos are available on my website, http://www.phil-seaton.com (click "Scissor Chair" once you get there). I will share the DXF files with anyone emailing from an academic email (".edu"); in exchange I ask that you send back photos of your process and finished chair, and tell me about any snags you hit while making it. The goal is to iron out problems people encounter during the making process: if you get the file, that's not license to distribute or sell the file or the finished chair."