week 7 Header Img

Week 7: Make something BIG




In this assignment i realy learnd a lot about CNC and woodwork!
We don´t have a big CNC in our lab, so i drove to our friends in Kamp-Lintfort and had some great days in a very nice team. Thanks to Karsten and Adriana!

The plan was to build a small, modular wooden greenhouse for my balcony. But where to start...
"Modular" means here, that you can make the greenhouse bigger or wider by just using the same parts, as in the Laser-Cutter-Assignment. Main problem by using wood are the connections between the single parts. Woodworkers uses some technic called dovetail for this, so i thougt about my own, cnc-compatible dovetails. Here is the result:

Connector




First i thougt "Ok, thats the way it fits in SolidWorks, so make all parts ready".

Fail

Karsten teached me, allways do a test on the CNC in your material, so you know 100% it works if you start the big job.

  • First job: draw it on solidworks
  • Second: export the drawing as a DXF-File
  • The CNC in Kamp-Lintfort doesn´t like the SolidWorks-DXF. The different heights (pocket or outline in this case) has to be in different layers of the DXF-File. So third: import the DXF to Rhino and change the layers. Also close all polylines!
  • Fourthly: load the DXF to the CNC, adjust the setting and start the beast!


  • Connector




    After some tries i figured out, how big the tolerance in wood is. Finaly i get a rock-solid connection!

    My dovetail is the main connection of all my parts, so i inserted it in all drawings. mainly i´ve got three different parts:

  • A connection between the joints in different length for side and roof
  • A End-Piece for the sides
  • and a Joint between side and roof and the both roof-halfes.


  • single parts




    After machining the parts i grind the edges and put it all together with some wood-glue.
    And voila: my little greenhouse!

    assembled




    As material i used chipboard in 10mm. That was the biggest fail in this assignment... Chipboard is the worst wood you can ever use! NEVER take this shit!!! Yes it is cheap, but this is the only advantage. It is very crumbly and absolutly not stabile! Better get some multiplex. 3x price, but 10000000000x better to work with!

    To the conclusion some pictures from the hole process:

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    If you want to build this phenomenal mini-green-house by yourself, here are all the files:
    ZIP-File

    So, have fun!