Batching - Maximizing Output On Your CNC

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:05]Hi, Morgan here from Onefinity and today we're talking about batching. Creating a bunch of one thing to maximize your output on the CNC. A lot of folks get a CNC because they want to level up their small business or side hustle and throughput is top priority. So we're going to look at some ways you can be more efficient with your machine so you can pump out as much stuff as possible.

[00:00:22]The reason I'm doing this is because sure we can talk all day about how you can make money with your machine, but the proof's in the pudding, right? So I'm going to be doing a little experiment. Over the next few weeks I'm actually going to be batching out a variety of small items and I'm going to try to sell them at this local farmers market that we have near the house every Saturday. I'll take careful records of costs, machining time, finishing time, miscellaneous expenses associated with doing this experiment. What sells, what doesn't sell and overall what you can expect when using your machine to make physical products on your CNC to earn money.

[00:00:53]Now I've never done anything like this before and over time I'll probably get better at it, but I think that starting with zero experience is actually >> [music] >> kind of a good thing. We're all starting at the same place. So having no historical data to lean on I'm just kind of guessing what might sell. So here's what I came up with. My Florida man carvings, slingshots, whiskey smokers, >> [music] >> roasters, cabbage boards, maps 2D and 3D.

[00:01:15]Serving {slash} charcuterie boards, charcuterie charcuterie I don't know, maybe this stuff will sell, maybe it won't, but I'm going to give it a shot and share everything that I learned throughout the process. I'm not going to go through all the items on this list in this video because today we're just going to be focusing on general best practices for batching.

[00:01:33]>> [music] >> Optimizing your design and tool paths to get the most out of your material and how to ensure consistency and repeatability to get the most out of your time. And those principles remain the same for any project you want to batch out. But I do actually have to make a batch of something to demonstrate. So out of that list of stuff I'm going to make a bunch of these coasters. They're a little more complicated than your standard coaster.

[00:01:54]Just a bunch of flat circles would be too easy. These have a bottle opener embedded in the underside and a laser cut adhesive backed cork base.

[00:02:01]I call them broasters. Kind of a dumb name, but people like dumb stuff. These methods we're going to go over today will show you how to make stuff consistently using multiple processes and materials.

[00:02:11]>> [music] >> Okay, so to batch out stuff like this, there's a lot of planning involved. When you're going for large quantities, high yield, you want to be as efficient with your machine as possible. And the best way to do that is by using as much of the machine bed as you can, cutting multiple parts so you don't have to keep going back to the machine while you're working on other processes.

[00:02:28]So you can be sanding, assembling, or finishing while the machine is cutting out your next batch of parts.

[00:02:33]To keep your cycle time manageable, there's a few things you need to set up.

[00:02:36]First is some kind of indexing system.

[00:02:38]By indexing, I mean fixed physical stops in known locations to maintain [music] a consistent work origin.

[00:02:45]And if you're working with multiple work pieces, those stops need to be spaced strategically.

[00:02:50]And standard material dimensions. To keep from having to make a bunch of different tool paths for different size materials, you can save time by making all of your material dimensions for a set of parts uniform. Saves time in tool pathing and adjusting work holding when swapping out material.

[00:03:04]>> [music] >> All right, before we start batching anything out, we need to set up our indexing system, so we'll start there. There are all sorts of ways to do this, but the simplest way I could think of doing it was by cutting a grid of holes. What's nice about this method is that it's cut by the machine itself. So when you're tool pathing it, as long as your vectors are all laid out right, you can count on those holes all being perfectly aligned with the X and Y axes.

[00:03:25]What that does is give you positive stops that you can rely on to maintain a constant work origin when swapping out parts.

[00:03:30]>> [music] >> Now, I went with half-inch diameter holes and 3D printed these little locating pins because they're just plastic and they won't damage anything if they get run over. And I can print as many of them as I need. But you don't need to have a 3D printer or even use this exact size. I've seen people use PVC pipe, wood, aluminum dowels, nylon dowels. Any of those work, you just want a a fit. I laid out these holes 4-in apart on center on both axes. So, when I need to cut a bunch of stuff out of multiple parts, I can lay everything out exactly where it's going to be on the waste board because those are all known measurements. For example, let's look at this batch of coasters I made. I bought a few pieces of red oak down at the old big box store. I realize that in my videos I use a decent amount of materials that aren't readily available for everyone. And some folks just want to make stuff with materials right off the shelf that they can easily pick up at the store. So, that's why I went with red oak for this project. I didn't rip them down with a table saw cuz not everybody has one of those. I just cut them to length with a circular saw.

[00:04:26]Now, red oak isn't my favorite to work with, but there's a cool finishing technique to kind of elevate this sort of dull-looking material. I'll show you that after it gets off the machine.

[00:04:34]Okay, so these boards are, like I said, red oak. They're 7 and 1/4 in wide, 3/4 of an inch thick, and 8-ft long. I got two of them and cut them down to four boards 36-in long.

[00:04:46]The holes that I drilled were 4-in apart on center. So, when tool pathing this, I can start by tool pathing just the first one, then copy and paste the vector for as many work [music] pieces as I have, and space them out in measurements divisible by four.

[00:04:59]So, in your tool pathing software, when you copy and paste it, you'll move it 8-in back along that axis, and where the boards are on your waste board in the real world will be reflected on the computer.

[00:05:08]Now, to complement this grid system, I also came up with this handy work holding system that goes along with it.

[00:05:14]All the holes are dead on parallel with the X and Y axes. [music] So, I made this set of wedges that lock into the same orientation.

[00:05:21]The holes on these wedges are offset by 2-in from one row to the next to give you a little bit of flexibility in how you position them. Just find where the static wedge makes the most sense, lock it in by inserting the pins, then tap in the floating wedge to secure in place.

[00:05:34]When you're batching stuff out, you're using multiple parts, swapping them out throughout a production run, and the last thing you need is for work holding to slow you down. So, this is a quick and easy way to secure your material when you need to move quickly. Now, the concept of work holding using wedges is nothing new. I'm not taking credit for that. But, designing it to use in tandem with this grid layout is words of a different color. All right, let's batch out some coasters. Okay, so we have all our work pieces laid out on the wasteboard and in our tool pathing software.

[00:06:00]>> [music] >> Now, we just need to populate it with our design and tool path it. I imported my SVG and arranged them within that rectangle to get the most coasters I could get out of this board. Once I have them all in there, I can just copy and paste the whole thing and move them 8 in along the Y axis to match the indexing system I set up on my wasteboard. Then, I just grouped all the vectors that will be cut the same way.

[00:06:21]Now, let's talk about the design real quick cuz that's a pretty important part of this process. I designed these coasters based on what's most common on the market, which seems to be 4 in in diameter. And I designed them so they could be mostly cut with a single bit.

[00:06:33]Tool changes add to your cycle time, so you want to do as much as you can with as few tool changes [music] as possible.

[00:06:37]For this, I'm using a 1/4 in spiral bit for the overall thickness and to cut out the recess for the bottle opener. I did have to make one tool change, though.

[00:06:45]After everything is done with the 1/4 in bit, >> [music] >> I switched to an 1/8 in spiral bit to cut them all out. That was so I could fit as many coasters onto one board as possible, minimizing waste. [music] If I wanted to do the whole thing with the same bit, I would have had to space them out more, reducing how many coasters I could get out of my material.

[00:07:01]So, that one tool change gave me a faster cycle time and a better yield out of my material. This board is 3/4 of an inch thick and [music] that's an absurd thickness for a coaster, so I'm going to flatten them down to 3/8 of an inch.

[00:07:13]There's no need to flatten the whole board down to that thickness, that would just [music] take more time. So, I selected the outermost circle and created a pocket tool path cutting inside the vector 3/8 of an inch deep.

[00:07:23]Then, cut deeper into the inside of the shape to make the space for the bottle cap to actually get up under the bottle opener. I did those in one pass because, remember, we already cleared out a bunch of thickness with the first tool path, so I'm not having to go through much.

[00:07:35]Then, I switched to an 1/8 in spiral bit for the final tool path cutout. Nothing fancy about that, just a profile tool path cutting outside the vector at full depth. Once they were all cut out, I just took everything off the wasteboard, set the coasters aside, >> [music] >> and cleaned up. Now, these coasters have multiple parts, so we're going to need multiple setups. For this part, I'm going to use my laser to engrave the branding and cut a hole in the center of the cork to expose the bottle opener. To ensure that they're all uniform, I need to make a fixture with known measurements to create a laser toolpath.

[00:08:04]These are just to hold the cork in position while running the laser.

[00:08:07]Then I just installed the laser, re-zeroed to the corner of the material, and ran that. While the laser does its thing, I went to work on the router table adding a 1/8 in round over to the outside edges of all the coasters. The cavity for the bottle opener was a little fuzzy, so I used a wire wheel to clean it up. The wire wheel will also come in handy a little bit later. I'll get to that in a minute. The finishing process I'm using here is meant to accentuate the grain. Here's how we do that. Before sanding or anything else, we're going to water pop these pieces.

[00:08:33]Water pop, I don't know why it's called that. Personally, I think it's kind of a silly name, but I don't make the rules.

[00:08:38]Water popping is when you wet the surface of the wood to raise and soften the tannin or the soft part of the wood that gives it its pattern. Using that wire wheel, we'll lightly go over the tannin. This creates just a very slight void to create contrast in the next process. This is the kind of tedious part. Not difficult, just tedious.

[00:08:55]You know, this might not actually be the best example of how to make things efficiently with your machine to make money with it, but we've already come this far, so let's keep going. After wire brushing the grain, I sanded. I sanded and I sanded and then I sanded some more and sanded. I don't feel like I really need to expand on that much because it's sanding. I sanded.

[00:09:15]I've already said too much. Anyway, sanding creates fine particles that want to stick in the grain that we just brushed out. So, I use compressed air to get it the heck out of there. Finally, these coasters are ready for finishing.

[00:09:26]For the first part of this process, I'm going to dye the coasters jet black using India ink. This stuff is super easy to apply. It's thin and the wood just soaks it right up.

[00:09:34]It dries pretty quick, then we move on to step two of this process, enhancing the grain with white tinted paste wax.

[00:09:41]The wax nestles into the grain that we just brushed out, effectively replacing it with a white accent. Again, no real strategy here, just rub it on, work it into the grain, and buff away the excess. While we were doing all that, the laser stuff was running in the background, and now it's done. Now we just install the bottle openers, peel the backing off the cork, apply it, and bada bing, bada boom, a bunch of coasters that people may or may not see the value in, which brings me to part two in this [music] video series.

[00:10:08]Throughout this project and all the other things I mentioned, I'm going to be taking careful notes as to material costs, machining time, total time, what sells, what doesn't, and an overall picture of what all went into the stuff that I made, and if it's something the public wants and is worth making more of.

[00:10:22]>> [music] >> Today we learned how to machine multiple parts efficiently. We'll find out later if this was the right project for my goals. All right, well, that's all I have for you today. I hope that you found this helpful, and I can't wait to show you how everything shakes out at the market. Hopefully this will give you a head start on diving into the projects that are actually going to help you make money with your Onefinity. And to see the exciting conclusion of this series, make sure that you subscribe to the channel and enable notifications so that you know right when it comes out. Thank you so, so much for watching. Y'all be good.

[00:10:49]>> [music]