this was my first almost view of my CNC machine, a nondescript crate in sea of others just like it… Ok, well not a “sea”, but there were a LOT of boxes and wrapped machines. The CNC biz seems to be a super busy one!
all the same, I'm still excited about my CNC 🙂
See those 7 words in the title up there? Two of them are a lie. And that exclamation point is feeling a bit sketchy too :/ The liar words are “brand new.” At this point, my CNC machine isn’t brand new anymore. That’s because I took forever to start writing what you’re reading right now. (You’ll find that procrastination/distraction is a fairly consistent theme hereabouts 
) Plus, it usually does take a bit to get a new or old CNC machine up and running, at least from my experience. I’ve done it a couple times now and they’re not exactly plug and play.
Truthfully though, I AM excited about my CNC, because it’s been up and working for a bit now and I’m getting the hang of its eccentricities. Plus I’m learning and trying new things with it all the time! I look all my die grinder bits and wonder which might work in my 1/4″ collet. And then which ones might fly off and embed themselves in my freezer wall…😳
wait, what's a CNC machine?
CNC stands for “Computer Numerical Control.” Basically that’s geek speak to describe a machine that follows a computer program’s instructions to move a tool head along various axes. For our purposes, the computer moves a router or spindle (which is like a router tool, only fancier) forward and back, from side to side, and up and down above a table. (There are also more complex CNCs that cost $$$ and other types of tool heads, like waterjets, lasers, torches, etc.) The spindle head holds various sizes and kinds of bits and engraves and cuts your ice, creating the design that you told it to make with your computer software.
Nowadays, most modern ice sculptors use CNC machines to engrave logos and various designs into slabs of ice, at least some of the time. There is one kind of ice sculpting CNC that’s designed to create three dimensional ice sculptures from upright full ice blocks. It’s an I-Sculpt machine that’s not made anymore, for now it seems. However, virtually all other CNC used for sculpting ice are “flatbed” table versions that were originally designed for other materials. Ice sculpting CNCs usually have modifications for working with ice in a freezer, since bearings and wires act differently in constant cold.
where do you get a CNC for sculpting ice?
CNC machines have been used in various industries for quite a while. And using them with ice isn’t new either. In fact, Iceculture in Canada first started using CNCs for ice sculpting BACK IN THE 1990s! That’s right, CNCs and ice sculpting have been around since last century! So I’m not exactly an early adopter with my CNC purchase.
If you google “CNC machine,” you’ll see that a lot of different companies make CNCs. You’ll also find out that there is more than one kind of CNC machine. Technically, the type that ice sculptors usually use is called a “CNC router machine.” But when you’re talking to other sculptors about them, all you have to say is “CNC.” They’ll know what you mean.
Ice sculptors use a variety of brands of CNC machines. I personally have used Lagunas, I-Sculpts, a modified Bulldog machine, and I almost used a ShopBot (that’s a long story). Oddly, it’s more difficult than you would think to figure out where to get a CNC machine for ice sculpting. Googling isn’t super helpful, but it reveals some machines that I’d never even heard of before. Wandering onto the Warthog website makes me think that it might be or have been a vendor for I-Sculpt, since there’s a small pic of an upright I-Sculpt CNC.
Ice sculpting is certainly a niche industry, so it’s not terribly surprising that companies have tried producing CNCs for ice sculpting and then decided later that it wasn’t getting them the best return on investment. Shopbot seems to have gone that direction, as I’ve lately seen used Shopbots, but not new ones. Bulldogs also are apparently gone. I am DEFINITELY not an authority in this particular respect, as I myself have a lot to learn about CNCs. However, I do know what I’ve seen in the past and I have talked with more than one CNC-using ice sculptor about who is and has made CNCs for ice sculpting.
this was the second CNC machine I ever used, after I got it running for another company in Memphis. iceculture in Canada was the original owner, but they sold it to a company in Atlanta. Dean Carlson later bought the cnc (and the company) and converted it to run I-Sculpt software. Not long after, I went and got it, took it to Memphis and got it operational. However, this photo is at Ice Pro in Florida. This cnc machine has since moved again to another shop in Florida, but is still chugging along! (5 locations and 2 countries!!) In this pic, I’m using it to make a New Orleans Saints fleur-de-logo for a season kickoff party at the Superdome 
I've mostly used I-Sculpt CNC machines
Years ago, I first started running I-Sculpt CNCs. I-Sculpts are specifically designed and built for ice sculpting, largely BY an ice sculptor (Dean Carlson), so it was a pretty good way to start. The design software was similar to a program I was already familiar with, Adobe Illustrator, so it wasn’t a huge jump to get started. None of the machines were mine, but I’ve run I-Sculpts at various ice shops in St. Louis, Memphis, LA, and in Florida. I also used to design for I-Sculpts remotely quite a bit for Ice Pro.
I guess I like I-Sculpt machines ok. To be fair, I’ve never really used the newer versions of the I-Sculpt software, which I understand has some pretty dramatic improvements. And since I didn’t have an I-Sculpt of my own, I never had unlimited access. So I’d use one or create designs for someone else, then it would be a while where I wouldn’t, and then suddenly I’d need to start designing, programming, and running sculptures again. That’s not a really good way to get comfortable with a CNC machine. Each time, I had to relearn things that I’d sort of forgotten.
how did I get to work with Laguna CNC machines?
Not long ago, after a hurricane here in New Orleans, things were kinda messed up (no power in parts of town, for example), so I went to work temporarily for other ice sculpting companies. I did some stuff for Ice Pro and then I went out to California to work with another company that had just lost some of its staff. I’d never run their main brand of CNCs, but how hard could it be? And surely they had someone there who could show me the basics, right?
Well, not exactly. Nobody in-house could run the CNCs. Both of the employees that had run them had left at almost the same time. They did have an I-Sculpt flatbed, so that was a place to start. But their main machines were Lagunas. I’d never run a Laguna and I’d never run the design software they used, EnRoute.
So I started with the I-Sculpt. But this machine was on it’s last legs. It used a router instead of a spindle (definitely not as good) and that router looked pretty wobbly. Even the table was messed up, with holes where the router had cut all the way through! After one run on the I-Sculpt, I gave up and moved to the Lagunas.
Between YouTube videos and a remote EnRoute designer that the company worked with on occasion, I figured out how to get the Lagunas running. And I was actually surprised how easy it was!
the big double spindle Laguna Swift Ice Carver CNC machine that I learned about Lagunas on. Yup, CNC envy; mine is WAY smaller 🤣
not everything went perfectly 😬
Sure, I screwed up. At one point, I drove a bit into one of the Laguna tables and only realized when I smelled burning rubber. Another time, I boldly stated that if I couldn’t finish a particular project by end of day, then I was incompetent! Nope, didn’t finish 
One of the funniest moments out in California was when someone told me, “oh they said you were a CNC guru.”
Huh?!
First, who the eff said that?! And why? I’m not a newbie, but GURU? Hardly. I really don’t think I’ll ever be a CNC machine guru. A CNC is a tool to help me get to the ice sculpture that I’m envisioning in my head. I’ll learn what I need to learn to help me get to where I’m trying to go.
But long story…long, my mostly positive experience with the Lagunas made me think that I might want one of those. And regardless of which machine I ended up with, I needed to get on this. So I started making my plan!
what kind of CNC machine would work for me?
Two things were clear. I didn’t have a lot of 
or freezer space. I’d just built my new/old freezer and we’d just begun to sorta emerge from the pandemic. The big Lagunas that I used in California took up a lot of space and cost a lot of money. Even the old ShopBot that I’d owned part of before was too big. Were there any other options?
It turns out there were. Initially, I thought that I might get another designed-for-ice-sculpting flatbed from another ice sculptor that I knew. This was a smaller, cheaper machine that honestly sounded perfect! But after he first told me that he would only sell to people with CNC experience (which I had), he gradually stopped responding to my messages. I definitely got the feeling that he didn’t really want to sell me a machine. I think producing CNC machines had turned into a headache for him.
But that wasn’t the only smaller, cheaper machine out there. (Actually, there are lots, but I wanted to buy from a company that had made machines for ice.) On the Laguna website, I found the IQ, a 2’x4′ machine that looked to be between $10K and $15K. A smaller CNC machine isn’t really as much a disadvantage as you might think. That’s because ice blocks are usually not bigger than 40″ x 20″. A 2’x 4′ machine is almost perfectly sized for that. And a smaller machine requires less valuable freezer real estate!
why did I choose the Laguna IQ CNC?
I knew that Laguna had made a bunch of machines for ice sculptors and that they were aware of some of the issues that the freezer presented. But I’d never seen an IQ used for ice sculpting. And the standard IQ had a LIQUID COOLED spindle 
However, Laguna said that I could get a different air-cooled spindle and the machine could be further modified for the cold. Plus, they had a slightly damaged machine that they could sell me at a discount, on top of some temporary special pricing. All of that would offset the additional cost of the different spindle and mods. So YES!
I still knew I was taking a risk with a probably unproven machine, for ice sculpting anyway But again, how hard could it be to get it to work? It was also set up for software I’d never tried before, V-Carve Pro. I’d handled EnRoute ok, though. That’ll be the easy part, surely.
I was right on the edge of what I could come up with money-wise, so I told them no V-Carve Pro (I’ll get it later!) and no shipping. (I’m coming to get it myself!)
where the CNC machines come from: the Laguna headquarters, near Fort Worth, Texas. Also, in case you’re wondering, Laguna was founded in California (in Laguna Beach, not surprisingly). Maybe they pulled a Tesla and shifted a lot of their operations to Texas? 🤷♂️ I have no idea, but it sure made my drive to pickup my CNC machine a LOT shorter, so YAY!
some CNC machines and other kinds of industrial tools (I think?🤷♂️), wrapped and ready for transport
boy, I sure hope there's a CNC in there!
So the gist of it was that, once I sent away all the money for my CNC machine, Laguna then gave me a tentative date as to when it would be ready. And then pretty much when they said it would be ready, it was. I’ve spent a lot of time in my life driving across Texas, so to only have to drive to Grand Prairie (in between Dallas and Ft. Worth), not a big deal. I had thought to grab it with a U-Haul trailer, but evidently it would be bad for the CNC machine since the trailer doesn’t have a soft enough suspension.
Once I got there, I didn’t have to wait long. I went the the warehouse, we found my crate, and they loaded it up. The crate was slightly larger than they said it would be, but it fit in my truck, so YAY! I took their word that there was actually a CNC machine in there, so back to Nola!
The crate/machine was not light, so getting it down to the ground at home was more fun than anticipated. (Yes, that’s sarcasm.) But once we did, unboxing it was a bit like Christmas in February! That is, if I ignored the part that it was going to be a bit before I could actually play with my new toy 
Once unboxed, I managed to move it a spot in my studio where it was only in the way a few times a day. And there it would stay…for A WHILE.
Darrell starting to uncrate my new CNC machine
I suppose I thought there would be more packaging, but as it turned out, my CNC machine was pretty securely strapped to the pallet at the bottom of the crate.
yup, it’s definitely a CNC machine!
see that repaired crack in the table at the lower left corner? That was worth a discount and it’s on a part of the table that I hardly ever see since it’s always covered with snow. Definitely a win! 
getting my CNC here was only the start!
Ok, so the CNC machine was here and sitting useless on the floor. Now what?! Well, this post is already WAY longer than I’d meant it to be. So if you’ve read all this, you may have to wait a bit for me to finish the story. (But also, I appreciate that you’ve actually read all this! ) I’ll try to write more about trying to get my CNC machine to make ice sculptures asap! I’ve actually already started, but the difference between starting and finishing can be…vast 😉 But stay tuned; hopefully this post is only first of many articles and resources for the site’s new CNC section.
End of Part one
2 Responses
Hey there, you should checkout http://www.icemonger.net for a new option in the niche world. 🙂 Good luck getting the Laguna rocking! – Ice Monger
Hi, thank you for your comment and for checking out my post! And yes, I have seen your site. The machine on your site is intriguing, but if you read what I wrote, you’d see it wasn’t a good fit for my needs. It’s too big (for my freezer anyway) and a bit too expensive for my needs at the time. And quite honestly, I’d think you need more info and transparency to convince someone to buy your machine. In my opinion, videos of the machine in action and lots more examples of work created on it would go a long way in that respect. And to know who is making the machine and how they’re an ice sculpting pro would also help. For example, with I-Sculpt, Dean Carlson was a well respected ice sculptor long before he started working with CNC machines. And he would spend hours talking to people about his machines and his software. Laguna, on the other hand, has managed to get machines at several different companies that I know of. And I think I recall someone telling me that there were around 30 Lagunas out there making ice sculptures. That number may even be low, but it’s still a healthy start. Again, your machine looks great on the website, but you might want to consider how you’d convince someone to drop $25K on a machine that seems somewhat unproven. I would say that most people who want an ice sculpting CNC machine don’t really care about specs, they want to know if it can help them easily and quickly make all the ice sculptures or cocktail ice that they need it to. I do hope it’s a great machine and I look forward to seeing more about it in the future. Thanks!
P.S. And by the way, I did later notice that you’re planning a smaller single block machine as well. That would be great and probably more in line with what I was looking for my first CNC. But I really think you need more “action shots” of the machine working before you need more upgrade options. I’m not trying to be negative; I think it would be great to have more CNC machine options for ice sculpting and I hope you can make it all work!