For the last few years, I’ve been making my wife overly complicated and time consuming Xmas presents. For this year, I have been inspired by this post and wanted to do something similar as she’s a huge book lover (being a teacher-librarian).
I’m going to try and make a library scene out of laser cut ply, then throw some angry pixies inside it for some backlighting. I have a rough idea of how it’s going to go in my head, but as always as I get started on design it’s likely to turn out significantly differently.
Starting this post as I am terrible with actually documenting the projects I am working on
Basic dimensions are 225x150x100 - around the same as most hardcover books, with the width of 3. I was kicking along nicely, then remembered that I hadn’t accounted for any of the laser kerf! From testing I did on the laser back in the day, I know it was around 0.15mm, so what I’ve done is allowed 0.2mm with a little nodule bit which protrudes an extra 0.1mm. This should give me a slight interference fit on the nodules, but reasonably loose everywhere else (assuming I get plywood which is 0.3mm - another story altogether. When I get some material to test and the laser is going again, I’ll do some more measuring to try and get this as accurate as possible as I had a bunch of issues with kerf when I was doing my ring boxes.
for you detailing, I would suggest doing a bunch of sketches before commiting to your 3d modelling. just knowing roughly what you’re planning will massively speed things up. Also collecting photos of alleyways/apartments externals for inspiration will also be a great help here.
Long story short, it took well over a month for a sheet of plywood which I’d ordered to show up. That, combined with keeping busy on other paid work has kept me away from finishing this off.
I ended up with 4mm plywood (which is ALL within 0.1mm thickness), so starting to redesign to suit. Thankfully I am getting a little bit better with Fusion so the process isn’t so painful.
I’ve set myself a goal of finishing this off by Valentines Day at the latest
I gotta say, it’s a real jerk trying to lay out and design everything keeping internal/external kerf widths in mind.
I have the ‘bookcase’ done, which I will cut a bunch of different height pieces of plywood and create a stack to sit inside there as books. I think this is just about the main structure finished, except maybe a faux-chandelier on the roof, maybe a window at the back to let some light in from the LED’s, etc.
I also added some of the holes for the electrical stuff, although this would be very easy to cut by hand when it’s all done and assembled.
