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136   Phone: 516-328-3970 www.technocnc.com CNC Articles Richard  Foster has been making gifts for  his  teachers,  friends  and  relatives since elementary school and became so good at it that people began paying him. Like millions of Americans, Richard Foster  dreamed  of  establishing  his independence  and  fi nancial  security at an early age by developing his own business based on doing what he loves to do, which is woodworking. Now  16  years  old,  Foster  faced a series of challenges early on in his career  and  was  able  to  tackle  those challenges and meet the needs of his growing  customer  base  by  becoming more  efficient  and  offering  quicker turnaround times. Foster had been using a table saw, drill press, and power router to build all sorts of pieces including a motor driven clock for his tennis coach that consisted of a hand-carved tennis racquet about one foot in diameter. Shortly  thereafter,  Foster  began  to receive  numerous  orders  for  racquet clocks. Foster was limited in the number that he could produce, as each one took four to fi ve hours to carve with hand and power tools. Soon orders for golf clocks followed and, the next thing he knew, all of his free time was occupied with making the clocks, which he sold at $80 each. “I found that more and more people 16-Year-Old Entrepreneur Builds Successful Woodworking Business with CNC Router model. The accuracy of the clocks is far better than even an experienced woodworker with 12 years experience, like Foster, is able to achieve. Foster then sands, paints and assembles the clocks and they are ready to. “The new machine has drastically reduced the amount of time required to make each clock,” says Foster. “This made it possible to cut the price of each clock in half, allowing the clocks to be more affordable for my customers and also gave me the time to design five new clock options: baseball,soccer,football, hockey, and basketball. Foster established a company called Time  for  Sports  and  looked  for  new avenues to expand the business - quite a challenge for someone notyet old enough to acquire his own credit card or drive to any business appointments. Foster’s next move was as a sponsor at  the  Nasdaq-100  Open,  a  tennis tournament  in  Key  Biscayne,  FL.  He made 570 clocks to sell at a booth at the event. Foster set new sales records and  established  an  important  new marketing channel for his company. He later became a sponsor at the Pilot Pen Tournament in New Haven, CT. Foster’s  early  entrepreneurial success led to media exposure, including TV  appearances  on  “Warehouse Warriors”, “Something to Talk About”, and “Senior Moments,”  and in the New York Times, and Newsday, all of which has helped drive traffi c to his Web site: www.richardfostertimeforsports.com and also helped to increase sales. “The Techno LC Series has played a major role in helping me to achieve a  signifi cant  level  of  with  very  little overhead, ”Fostersays .“Its capacity and ability to operate on its own provide the potential for our company to introduce new  products  without  any  additional capital investment.” wanted  to  buy  the  clocks  but  there wasn’t enough time in the day to make them, ”says Foster.“I was aware of CNC machines, but I knew that they cost a lot of money.” Foster  remembered  reading  an article about Techno’s new low cost LC series CNC routing system. The machine provides a number of features that  fi t Foster’s needs. Ball screws are provided on all three axes, offering smooth motion, a high level of accuracy and repeatability, and minimal maintenance. A closed loop servo  control  system  provides  higher power,  constant  position  feedback that eliminates the possibility of losing position in the middle of a part. “The  Techno  machine  seemed to  have  all  the  features  that  I  was looking for,” says Foster. “Besides cost ($15,000), it also offers a high level of accuracy,  repeatability  and  minimal maintenance. Techno also provided me with Rhinoceros and Visual Mill software. I  was  able  to  set  up  the  machine  in my family’s garage and I was off and running.” The new router made it possible for Foster to increase his clock output in a fraction of the time. “I started by defining the geometry for  my  clocks  with  the  Rhinoceros software,” Foster says. “This process required me to fully define the design and ensured that every clock I produced was identical. Then I imported the geometry into  Visual  Mill,  where  I  defi ned  the motions  of  the  router  required  to  cut out the clock. I then downloaded the resulting G-code program to the CNC router.” Fosterthenloadsafour1” x 12” pine boards onto the machine at a time, and can cut out one side of 12 tennis clocks in an hour. Foster then turns over the board for the machine to cut out the other  half.  Each  clock  is  produced exactly like Foster’s original computer With the help of his Techno CNC router Foster was able to build all sorts of pieces including this motor driven clock. As written by and seen in Wood & Wood Products Magazine, December 2005