I call it “Sea Glass”. Making clear no color glass is a challenge as the slightest amount of iron in the sand causes that odd blue-green color. As much of the more historical glass had it and later Coke patented the color. Much broken glass worn round by the waves has become a special find they call “sea glass” and special because of it. The acrylic of that color is not about that but made to resemble actual “cheap” window-type iron-colored glass.
I cannot see it without recalling the history and how the color was hated, But it has a great place now.
Ok, so I’m a huge liar, apparently. I’m going to hijack this one more time. This is just such a cool design process, I can’t stop playing with it.
This time I tried a little multimedia, wood and brass. I also tried different join gaps. The brass rods are placed in a way that locks the joints into place against the walls. The only ones with any glue are the top and bottom ones that touch the base and upper ring. It’s very solid. I did over compensate for kerf and had to force the rods into place, which did cause some de-lamination of the plywood in a couple of places. That being said, I’m very surprised how well the proofgrade plywood holds up when cut thin.
I love the rods and the spacing of the stacks. I tried last night to get setup in cuttle to make a parametric file, but I am not sure which approach is best.
The primary difference is that “light” is basswood in the middle and “medium” is MDF in the middle. This threw me off a lot as I thought Light was thinner material.
Yeah, me too. I grabbed a sheet of each and looked at the edge. I can see the difference now that you pointed it out. I just hope they can maintain consistent thickness with a natural core.
I have to measure and adjust for almost every different acrylic sheet. I don’t want to be doing that for all the plywood too. Currently the tolerances are good enough on the medium plywood that I only measure if it feels wrong to me for some reason.
Any time I cut something with notchs/slots/fingers, I cut a test piece from the sheet I plan to use to check fit first, then design to suit. Not only does material vary, but it seems to me that the kerf changes depending on when the machine was last cleaned, etc.
This is an example of one. I have several for different materials.
I bought a lot of the light materials when they were on sale. My problem is I’m not good at adjusting kerf, so I’ve only used it for flat things, earrings and such.
@bwente Just saw this today. I’ve seen stacked layers to make curved shapes, and obviously seen boxes with panels, but I’ve never seen them combined so that the stacks can make curved corners while still using panels for most of the sides. So cool!
@ESteele I love these variations too! The one with the rods is my favorite.
Great idea! Yes I’m sure you can do this just like you did for the Coffin Box.
You’ll need to get the angle for every corner. I sketched out the code for this here:
We should add this to the geometry API, so you can just do path.angleAtTime(t) or something.
I spent some time in Cuttle putting something together to at least take care of the fiddly stuff: sides, joints and spacers (which are the only components in this project that work correctly, I think). This is probably not the best or most efficient way to get results, but I was looking for something quick and dirty. By the way, it wasn’t quick, but it’s dirty. This is still a work in progress.
There are two aspects of this project that make altering designs a LOT less painful. First, the “numSides” parameter automatically adjusts the angles on the joint and spacer parts. Second, there’s a “jointGapList” parameter that allows for custom placement of the joints on the side panels. The numbers in the list are the number of spacers you want between consecutive joints. Of course, you don’t have to cut the spacers, it can be just gaps.
