Brandi Dixon Education Program Manager Hardesty Center for Fab Lab Tulsa

CNC cutting

Laser cutter

Inkscape for Design

I decided to make stackable robots for my parametric design. They stack and hold hands with fit together pieces.

I designed them by drawing basic shapes and using boolean operations to join them. Path > Union and Path > Difference are some of the most often used tools for creating semi complex shapes with ease.

When making slot together pieces that are a snug fit it is tedious to have to change ever slot when the thickness of your material changes. Inkscape has a cloning function that is helpful in expediting this process. Edit > Clone > Create Clone makes a copy that is tied to a parent object. Whenever you change the parent object all of the other objects are changed as well. This holds true if the child object is rotated or scaled. This means all of the shapes above are edited at once, even the slots that have been scaled down for the smaller pieces.

My files can be found at: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1410970

Just after this project we needed a fun project for our board members to engage in lab activities. The bot was slightly modified and simplified and cut on the shopbot. Fun shenanigans ensued.

Like this tower of robots!