Creating a Humidor Control Box

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Contributors: Paul Smith
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Overview

In this tutorial, I am going to go through the process of how the SparkFun humidor was designed and built. A humidor is any kind of box or room with constant humidity, used to store cigars, cigarettes, pipe tobacco, or in this case sensors. I'll be covering designing a 3D software model and fabricating it using a CNC router.

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The finished project

Requirements

I realize the following list includes some items that are very expensive and probably not too common in everyone’s home/shop. I still wanted to show their use for someone who may not be familiar with these tools. Here is what I will be using:

  • Creo Parametric 2.0 (formerly Pro Engineer, FREE for educational purposes - Software)
  • Visual Mill 5 (Software)
  • Mach 2 CNC (Software)
  • K2 CNC Machine (Hardware)

Background

If you don’t already know, a CNC router is a computer controlled router capable of cutting out very complex shapes. CNC stands for Computer Numerical Control. The CNC machine is connected to a computer and is given very precise three dimensional coordinates to which the machine should move. Using a combination of motors and encoders, the machine is able to cut out nearly anything you can draw. There is lots to cover, so lets get started.