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Black CNC cut screens set either side of an upper hallway opening, and a matching decorative screen built into a partition wall. This is the part of millwork that reads as architecture rather than cabinetry, and it is machined rather than built.
The pattern has to survive being cut
A screen pattern that looks good on a screen does not always cut. Once a design is turned into a toolpath, every internal corner gets the radius of the cutter, and every thin ligament between two voids becomes a structural question. Too fine and the piece flexes or breaks coming off the bed. Too heavy and it stops reading as a screen and starts reading as a wall with holes in it.
Resolving that is a conversation between the design and the machine, and it happens before anything is cut. We adjust the ligament width and the corner radii until the pattern holds together at the size it is actually going to be made.
Material choice is a structural decision
A screen is mostly void, so the material has to do more with less. Sheet stability matters more than surface appearance, because a panel that moves will show it immediately when half of it has been removed. For painted work that usually means MDF, which machines cleanly and takes a flat finish. For stain-grade the grain direction has to be planned against the pattern, since a long ligament running across the grain is where a screen will fail.
Finishing a machined edge
The cut edges are the whole surface area of a screen. On a black finish every one of them is visible, and machining leaves a different texture than a face. Those edges get sealed and finished as carefully as the faces, or the piece reads as unfinished from an angle even when it looks right straight on.
Fitting into an opening
A screen set into an existing opening has no tolerance to hide in. There is no door and no filler. The opening gets measured after the drywall and the paint, not from the drawing, and the screen is cut to that measurement. If the opening is out of square, and openings usually are, the frame absorbs it rather than the pattern, because a pattern that steps out of alignment at one edge is the first thing anyone notices.
More on this work is on the CNC carving page and architectural millwork. Finished installations are collected in the project gallery.
