This title is a travesty. I needed math to figure out how to automatically carve out a tablespoon of material with a CNC machine. So this is that math and some recipe level background.

For my most recent birthday I picked up a very small cnc machine. I wanted to bring a bit of computer assisted fun to my woodworking and this is so much fun.

I saw a video on making a coffee ground scoop but I really didn’t like the idea of a “tablespoon” that wasn’t a true measurement being a part of my coffee routine.

The software I used didn’t seem to have what I needed so I spent some time looking things up. It came down to some math that I have not done in too many years. I did some research and found a few bits of information that helped give chatGPT enough data to do the hard parts for me.

Cutting with inches is really not ideal but I was just figuring things out and it worked out pretty good.

For a depth of .5 inches I needed a radius of .729 inches to get 1 tablespoon of coffee grounds.