Woodworking is the fine art of building jigs. Even though we have Internet-connected toasters, thermostats, cars, and coffee makers, the Internet of Things hasn’t really appeared in the woodshop quite yet. That’s changing, though, and [Ben Brandt]’s Internet of Things box joint jig shows off exactly what cheap computers with a connection to the Internet can do. He’s fully automated the process of making box joints, all with the help of a stepper motor and a Raspberry Pi.
[Ben]’s electronic box joint jig is heavily inspired by [Matthias Wandel]’s fantastic screw advance box joint jig. [Matthias]’ build, which has become one of the ‘must build’ jigs in the modern woodshop, uses wooden gears to advance the carriage and stock across the kerf of a saw blade. It works fantastically, but to use this manual version correctly, you need to do a bit of math before hand, and in the worst-case scenario, cut another gear on the bandsaw.
[Ben]’s electronic box joint jig doesn’t use gears to move a piece of stock along a threaded rod. Stepper motors are cheap, after all, and with a Raspberry Pi, a stepper motor driver, a couple of limit switches, and a few LEDs, [Ben] built an Internet-enabled box joint jig that’s able to create perfect joints.
The build uses a Raspberry Pi 3 and Windows IoT Core to serve up a web page where different box joint profiles are stored. By lining the workpiece up with the blade and pressing start, this electronic box joint jig automatically advances the carriage to the next required cut. All [Ben] needs to do is watch the red and green LEDs and push the sled back and forth.
You can check out [Ben]’s video below. Thanks [Michael] for the tip.
