~/timhadwen

Building a resin printer cabinet on a borrowed SmartBench

2026-05-23

Resin printing is messy and the fumes are worse, so the Photon Mono X and its wash and cure station needed a proper home instead of a corner of the bench. That meant a cabinet, and the cabinet panels were bigger than anything my Shapeoko can cut.

The fix: I borrowed a SmartBench, Yetitool's portable full-sheet CNC. It packs down and moves like a site tool, but it cuts a full sheet of MDF in one go. I set it up in the garage and ran the panels through it.

The SmartBench finishing a panel cut

The cabinet is tab and slot construction, so the panels come off the machine and knock together with barely any fasteners. The main panel cut took about 46 minutes.

A cabinet panel with tab and slot joints

And the finished cabinet, with the printer and wash station in their new home.

The finished cabinet with the Photon Mono X inside

A full-sheet machine that folds away is a clever thing. I gave this one back, but it was hard to.