[adamjohn]

I got to thinking about routers.....
In the "old" days, you'd use a pantograph....

But manual or CNC, one aspect that throws the perspective is that a CNC spindle and axis control eats power....but pumps out the product!

A manual machine, on the other hand, may use less power, BUT, you have to run it a lot longer for the same toolpath.
... And my coffee consumption tripled when I started running CNC.... so you have to factor in the pot wattage, extra trips to the store for beans...

[beone]

Had a bit of trouble sleeping there, did we adamjohn?

[awerby]

So if you can make more products out of wood in a shorter amount of time, is that worse for the planet? If that's the case, then is any increase in productivity a bad thing, ecologically speaking? If you're powering your router with solar panels and cutting recycled materials, does that make it okay?

[harryn]

One way to look at it is the total cycle involved to make something. Take for example making a 24 x 24 inch "door", with internal carvings and some kind of decorative edge.

If you did this with traditional tools, it would take conventional cutting, then routing, then several steps of sanding, all creating a lot of dust and using power.

With a very solid CNC, you can do the entire project and most of the fine detail very accurately, greatly reducing the power and dust related to sanding.

It also has the potential to reduce transportation related pollution, as items made locally with CNC compete against items made overseas and shipped to you. A tree grown and turned into a table represents fixed carbon, so if you are into carbon counting, a person could argue that we improve the world by building things out of wood.

[ger21]

What many woodworkers consider to be traditional tools, don't use any power at all.

[Browellr]

A cnc can also be used to make tools, templates, jigs, and fixtures to speed up the process of traditional woodworking.