Great Marco, could you share the type of wood you used? And how long did it take to cut out the wood? Thanks! I am honna cut my first one this week and would love to have some benchmark

I used 3/4" marine plywood that was close to 19mm thick. I had some problems with 1/4" shank bits. I like to use 1/4" cutters to reduce the sawdust. I tried using a 1/4" cutter with a 1/4" shank and broke or shook loose 4 of them. The only way I could keep one running was to reduce my cut speed to 30ipm. I am now using a 1/4" cutter with a 1/2" shank made by Whiteside (p/n 1058) with great success. I organize the cuts by part , group several parts, and make gcode files for each group. It takes a little longer this way but it allows me to make adjustments if needed. When I get comfortable with the individual files I'll run the whole sheet in one file. My default cut speed is 60ipm with a 3 1/2hp, 22,000rpm router. I am testing the upper limit as I go and I think I'll be able to settle around 90ipm.
The CTB takes me about 1 1/2 hours and eventually I hope to get that down to under an hour. The Warre is between 2-3 hours with a goal of under 2 hours. Both cut times include time to change files. The designs are both well engineered and complete. I've run 6 so far and I'm still awestruck at how well thought out they are. The only change I made was to add rabbits for the acrylic windows on the Warre.
I use a Makita 3/8" mini belt sander for cleanup(what little is needed). It's small enough to get into the mortise cuts and eats up end grain.

I hope this helps, please feel free to contact me if you need any help.

Good luck with your first cut!

About my machine:
I built my machine from a kit sold by www.cncrouterparts.com. It has nema 34 motors and a rack and pinion system, heavy duty for a kit machine. It cost me about $7k to get a functional 9' x 5' machine that I'm happy with. It's a good way to go if you can afford the sweat equity. It was a fair amount of work and if I was to do it again I would buy the prewired electronics box.

I thought it would be nice to have some models to take to events where full size hives would be out of place. I did this one at 1/10th scale on a 3d printer. The top is removable and the internal parts installed. It's probably too small and fragile for a lot of handling. My next step will be to scale it to 1/8" plywood and cut it on a laser.

Hey There,

If you send us the file you made, we'll put it on the OSBH github repo.

Thanks!
aaron@opensourcebeeives.net

aaron@opensourcebeeives.net

Where should I post them to? I have both the .stl and .gcode files I can send. The .stl files are large (12meg zipped) for emailing, but I'll try. I also have the full size gcode files for Mach3 and native files for Cut2d/VCarvePro if anyone is interested.

I think there might be an email next to my name somewhere - I'll throw them up to Github

Here's the finished product. I took the nested file and scaled it in Rhino to 1/6 scale. I then exported as a .dxf and imported into Corel Draw (Epilog Lasers uses Corel as it's post processor). I used a laser friendly plywood from Laser Bits, Birch plywood requires so much power that the wood gets fried in the process! I had to sand a bit to get the fit right but all together it only took about an hour to make it. I used a Dremel with a router attachment to rout the dados and then I assembled it without glue just like the full size version. I will probably end up gluing some parts because it will be handled so much.
I hope nobody minds the plug for this website.
This will make a great tool for explaining how a hive works and I will be modeling the Warre to show the differences between designs.

This is AWESOME! Excellent work @marcob8890 - I just shared it on our Facebook page. Could you place the scaled down files in our Community Github Repo?

Please be sure to share pics / files for the scaled down Warré when it's ready

@marcob8890 email me at aaron@opensourcebeehives.net and i'll put it up on github

Just finished the Warre at 1/5 scale. Used the same process.

And now for some full size hives. That's my first CTB with the new rev., worked great! The residents arrive May1st so I need to get back to work......

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I convinced a friend with a CNC to build me a hive.
They are so popular, we decided to put up a website.
I'll be picking up my TBH on the 18th, and transferring my bees into it shortly after.
I am looking forward to building with my RPi 2 for monitoring and just plain geekiness.

I've been a beekeeper for about 5+ years.

http://connectedhive.com

---

Ali White
Austin, Texas

HI @hardcherry these are beautiful - would love to see your photos posted here - please keep us updated as you get your bees in your hives!

Hey @hardcherry!

Thats awesome - could you share your design files with the community or have you already done so?

Please forward the files to tristan(at)opensourcebeehives(dot)net.

Great work!

I will contact my Designer and have him do so.
Thanks so much

It says new users can't upload photos.

Won't let me upload because I'm a "new" user but hopefully these links will work:

Final product
Full album

I used a CARB phase II compliant Birch that seemed to work pretty well. Not sure if it was exterior or interior, or what the grade was. If anyone can tell from looking at the label halfway through the album I'd be interested to know. I also coated it in linseed oil (how many coats did others use??) and sealed the roof with beeswax.

This hive will hopefully be installed at the Cincinnati zoo in the coming weeks.

I built these feeders to fit into the Warre based on my friend Ed's recommendation. It should hold a gallon of feed and hopefully get them off to a good start. We pick up the bees on Friday and will start a total of 7 hives in S.E. Texas. Another is being started by Nils & Miriana in Dallas, and they have 3 other people wanting to start hives. I built a total of 10 hives on speculation, they are all gone and I need to build more. Although the aesthetics may not be important to the health of the colony it has been a big part of people accepting these hives, good engineering is as much art as it is engineering and you guys did a great job on designing these hives.

We managed to get all 7 hives installed and populated on Friday. I was a long day but everything went as planned and hopefully we got them all off to a good start.