For Patrick Doring, a Secret Santa gift became a three-month exploration of what he could make with the Carvera Air. Created for a friend in his Dungeons & Dragons group, Enrico’s Oracle combines a working mechanical dice system with engraved metal, character reliefs, and delicate wood inlay. Nearly every part carries something Patrick had to learn—or something personal to the friend who would receive it.
“When I came across the Air, it was like, ‘Oh, this is perfect. It’ll fit in my office, and I can use it to make things out of metal.’”
— Patrick Doring
Based in Seattle, Patrick works in technology, with a background in engineering and software development management. Outside work, he enjoys making things in the physical world. His projects and interests have ranged from building a mandolin to experimenting with LED circuits, microcontrollers, 3D printing, and metal machining. Enrico’s Oracle brought many of those interests together in his first major project on the Carvera Air.
The Art of “Productive Procrastination”
Patrick has been making things with whatever was available since childhood. Personal projects have remained a way to follow his curiosity outside his professional work.
“I like to call it productive procrastination. When I’m not feeling like working on work, generally I’m working on some sort of personal project that’s creatively fulfilling in some way.”
During the pandemic, while his wife was in graduate school and he was working from home, he decided to build a mandolin. He had been considering buying a high-end, hand-carved instrument. Instead, he spent the money on tools and wood, enjoyed the process, and ended up with a mandolin he loves.
The experience also gave him woodworking skills he could carry into other projects. That pattern kept repeating. A basic LED circuit led to programming microcontrollers. Learning to 3D print raised another possibility: making things out of metal.
Each project gave him a reason to learn the next skill. Eventually, that curiosity led him toward machining.
Making Room for Metalworking
Patrick had wanted machining capability for years. Makers such as Uri Tuchman and Not an Engineer influenced his interest in objects that combine mechanical function with an expressive visual style.
Space, however, kept complicating his plans. He considered the mills, lathes, and supporting equipment a traditional setup might require, then looked at the limited room available to him.
After years of considering different machines, Patrick chose the Carvera Air and began exploring metalworking in the space he already had.
He began with smaller projects. The first he designed himself was a fidget spinner based on his dog, made for his wife. An interest in building a clock led to experiments with gears and small mechanisms. He also engraved brass labels for friends.
Makera Studio helped him get started with early projects while he was still learning what CAM involved. Later, Enrico’s Oracle gave him a reason to become more comfortable with Fusion, where he developed most of the mechanical design.
By then, he had enough experience to try something considerably more ambitious.
A Mechanical Way to Roll the Dice
Before drawing his friend’s name for Secret Santa, Patrick had already been sketching ways to roll a set of dice mechanically. The gift exchange gave those experiments a recipient and a deadline.
“When I think about a friend or a loved one and I go, ‘Oh, what’s something they might like?’ I think there’s a bit of a font of creativity there.”
He and his friend shared an appreciation for interesting mechanical objects. That gave Patrick a direction for the gift: turn one of his dice concepts into something they could enjoy together.
Enrico’s Oracle uses numbered wheels to represent different dice, with windows showing the results. A 120-tooth outer ring provides the starting point for the gear arrangement. Turning the mechanism moves the wheels, bringing numbers into view.
The earliest design was simple. Patrick first needed to establish whether he could machine the parts at a workable size and get the mechanism to run. His smallest end mill, measuring 1 mm, helped determine the gear-tooth geometry and the overall scale.
The gear carrier was a critical test. If it could not hold the gears in a working arrangement, the rest of the design would have little to build on.
“When I first put the top and the bottom piece of this gear carrier on here and actually got the gears in and working with each other just in isolation, it was like, ‘Okay, I think this will work.’”
With the mechanism working, Patrick could begin adding the visual details that made it personal.
A Character’s History, Written in Metal and Wood
Enrico is a name from the backstory of Patrick’s friend’s D&D character. Over the course of their campaign, that character had taken the forms of an elf, a dwarf, and a tiefling. Those identities became recurring motifs throughout the Oracle.
Patrick adapted character-token images used in their virtual tabletop games into artwork for the piece. Relief portraits reference the character’s different forms, while an ear, a hammer, and a horn represent the elf, dwarf, and tiefling.
He used Fusion for the mechanical structure and Illustrator for much of the decorative vector work. For the reliefs, he prepared images and used an image-to-3D tool to generate models he could machine.
On the back, thin wood veneers form an intricate inlay set into brass. This was Patrick’s first experiment with the Air’s laser module for marquetry. After testing the technique, he incorporated it into the gift.
Even the decorative screw cover grew out of that willingness to experiment. He initially planned to leave it plain if the relief proved too difficult. Near the end of the project, he machined the ornament and fitted it over the exposed hardware.
The finished Oracle contains approximately 20–25 parts. Apart from standard hardware such as screws and bearings, every component was made on the Carvera Air, using CNC machining for the metalwork and the laser module for the wood veneer.
What the Unsuccessful Parts Taught Him
The finished piece conceals a considerable amount of redesign.
Patrick spent roughly a month and a half exploring the design and about another month cutting parts, with assembly and finishing bringing the project to around three months. He worked on it between other commitments.
“I broke a bunch of end mills. I messed up a bunch of stock. And every single time I did that, it was a learning experience that made me better at it.”
One problem appeared when he assembled the gear carrier into its frame. He expected a central bolt and pressure on the bearing to hold everything in position. Tightening it instead caused the bearing to seize. He had to design an additional insert to keep the assembly located without relying on so much pressure.
The gears presented another challenge. They needed accurate teeth, engraving on both faces, and a way to return to the correct position after being flipped. A central bolt could secure a gear, but it also blocked access for engraving near the center.
Patrick developed a sequence of setups, including a small toothed clamp that stopped the gear from rotating. He engraved the accessible areas first, then secured the part with another clamp before removing the center bolt to reach the remaining surface.
Every setup changed how he approached the next one. As he learned more about machining, he revised parts still waiting to be made, saving time and avoiding problems he could now anticipate.
Saving the Brass for Last
The two large brass pieces carried an extra constraint: the Secret Santa exchange had a spending limit. If Patrick ruined either one, replacing it would exceed his budget. He would have to use aluminum instead.
He saved those parts until late in the build, taking shallow cuts and working carefully. By then, the preceding parts had taught him far more about tool selection, toolpaths, and holding thin metal securely.
The brass pieces came out successfully. The earlier mistakes had given him practical reasons to trust his approach when the material mattered most.
Patrick is candid about the frustration involved. Broken cutters, unusable stock, and software crashes were discouraging. But each problem left him with something he could change on the next attempt.
His advice to other beginners reflects that experience: don’t let the fear of an imperfect result stop you from trying.
“Stuff will break. It’ll break no matter what. It’s just a matter of how quick you can get to learning from it.”
Something a Friend Couldn’t Find Elsewhere
Patrick’s friends take Secret Santa seriously. One turned his collection of smoking recipes into a physical cookbook, adding recipes of her own. Another found an antique porcelain whiskey decanter depicting the Pacific Northwest.
In that company, thinking carefully about the recipient is part of the pleasure.
Patrick is not sure he would have built the Oracle for himself. It would have been an interesting object to keep in his office, but making it for someone else gave him a reason to invest so much in it.
“I don’t know if I would have put the effort into it that I did unless it was something that I’d like to share with somebody else.”
Making the Oracle also changed his understanding of how objects are designed and manufactured. After years of 3D printing, machining introduced questions he could only fully understand by working through them himself. He credits the Carvera Air with making that experience accessible within the space he had.
Enrico’s Oracle holds those lessons in its gears, fittings, and finished surfaces. For its recipient, it also holds something immediately familiar: a shared adventure, remembered in metal and wood.
“It just feels good to give somebody something that is personal that they probably wouldn’t be able to get elsewhere.”
Explore more on Patrick Doring’s website.
How a Veteran Machinist Paid Off His Carvera Air in Six Months