In broad strokes, mankind's woodworking abilities have gone from 1) hand tools, to 2) power tools to 3) CNC machinery. And although the power tools step was a quantum leap from hand tools, it still requires you physically touch the material quite a bit, guiding and steadying it while performing your operations; with CNC, you only contact it when you're loading and unloading it into the machine. There is a materials disconnect with CNC, as you're not physically guiding the cuts, and you don't even have to be in the room when it's happening.
Which is why I found this human-computer-interaction concept from Germany's Hasso Plattner Institut so interesting. Called "Interactive Lasercutting," the researchers use a self-rigged lasercutter called the Constructable, and require the user to be present during the cutting. Rather than drawing up a CAD file, converting it into a tool path, loading the machine and taking lunch, the user is meant to stand over the machine and instigate each cut, or series of cuts, by "drawing" on the wood with a laser pointer. The machine then translates your sloppy strokes into precise cuts, something like handwriting recognition turning your chicken scratch into typography. Observe:
Hopefully you're able to disregard the clunky interface—all those styluses represent different types of cuts—and weird editing, and just focus on the concept: Do you think this has merit? For single-object production, could this actually be more efficient than doing the CAD/toolpath dance? I suspect not, but there's something I like about being able to stand over the material and manipulate it in real time.
Thoughts?
See also: A Handheld CNC for 2D Applications
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Want to quickly draw a shape? Use a Wacom tablet or a touchscreen - same sketching motions, with greater precision, plus the ability to see what exactly you're drawing and edit before cutting. Want to draw something right upon your piece of wood? Use a pen with UV ink, then put it into you laser cutter combined with a cheap scanner or a camera. Even a simple colored pencil will do, actually, as long as your software can recognize its distinct color while analyzing the scan. But this entire contraption built around laser pointers is so pointless, so anti-ergonomic and so anti-any-meaningful-real-life-usage that it can have one purpose only: to remind us all that there are really bad design ideas too, and you should avoid implementing them in metal.
Using a single laser with a menu located near the material would be a less complicated solution - point the laser at polyline on the menu, then draw out your shape on the material. Point it at rounded corner and then go back to the material to draw your corners. You would be a lot more productive than constantly changing pointers.