Wednesday, September 5, 2012

after a long break, i am back! (with companion cube awesomness!)

ok, so this is the process of building post. there will be another post showing off the final product!

as you can see by the picture, the cube is made from a box, and corner pieces, each of which are made from 3 pieces of  .75" MDF

dimensions:
  • box (exterior) - 20" x 20" x 20"
  • box (interior) - 18.5" x 18.5" x 18.5"
  • box (corner pieces included) 24.5" x 24.5" x 24.5"



the original design was from  http://j-n-white.livejournal.com/107399.html however measurements were changed a bit to make it work with imperial measurements. (scale factor of 1.016, rounded to the nearest 1/8 inch)

ok, so i bought some wood... home depot messed up the cut :(


after cutting all the wood, i took the main body of the cube to school, and used the cnc mill to make a channel for the EL wire. a 1/8 inch bit did the trick perfectly. you can use a hand router for this, or carefully use a table saw to do a rip cut, just be careful with your depth.





next step was to cut all the wood for the corners.


and then glue it!!!!

alright, so then i started cutting out the corner pieces. and well...i was using hand tools (mainly a jig saw) so the cuts were not all that accurate. i then ran into a problem where it was impossible to make a cut. thus forcing me to buy a table saw... just buy a table saw in the beginning. you can do every cut (except for the middle circles and curves) with it, so it is definitely worth it!!!


so, i finished the boxy part of the box. home depot made a cut that was off by about 1/8 of an inch. my tolerance on the box part was 1/16 of an inch, and 1/8 of an inch for the corners. so i had to wood filler it a bit.

next, i cut the door so that when the cube was shut, it would look seamless with the rest of the box. the part f's are cut short so that the door thickness will make them the right size. because of this, you need to cut the angles into the door.


next thing was to cut the curves out of the corner pieces. this was done with a coping saw... then finished off with a rasp and some 60 grit sand paper. later it was smoothed with 180 grit, primed, then smoother with 400 grit.

first, draw your guide lines.
second, cut the front curve.
 
draw guide lines from the bottom edge of the front
curve, to the sides of the top cut

start cutting across, if it gets difficult, chisel out the
piece and keep cutting.
it takes a long time, but dont rush. the result is worth it!
remove any blade marks with a random orbital sander. dont
worry about it being smooth to the touch.
should look like this.

as i said above, my tolerance was fairly small... due to cutting this all with hand tools, i had a small problem lining stuff up. all the part C's were too large, so i lined up the A and B or A and F. then i cur the part C to fit the lined up A/B or A/F combo.


more to come in the next post!!!

1 comments:

Matthew Prindiville said...

I want one D:

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