Tag: Fusion360
Categories
Paint Racks
Emma’s paint collection is getting pretty big. It was impractical to find colors in her basket, so I decided to create some parametric wall-mount removable paint racks to hold her Apple Barrel paint collection.
The Tools
- Fusion 360
- Lightburn
- CO2 laser cutter
- clamps
- rubber bands
The Materials
- 5mm birch wood
- wood glue
- drywall screws
The Design
I wanted the racks to be easily removable so I made slots for the screws to easily go in at the ends of the rack. I initially made it to hold 12, but it ended up being too wide.
Fusion 360 file for Paint Rack
1 file(s) 505.25 KB
I would post the Lightburn/SVG/DXF files, however, the design is dependent on the thickness of the material. 1/4 inch MDF ranges from 5.5-6.3 mm. The birch I used was 5mm. Also, the laser kerf (thickness of the laser cut) even though small, may be different than your machine. To do it right, you really need to open the file in Fusion and save the sketches yourself after updating the parameters.
The design is completely parametric so the bottle diameter, height, count, and material thickness are all customizable so I can use this to hold anything else like paint cans, sauce bottles and spices, etc.
Birch wood seems to have a lot of ash when cut on the laser so I had to take a damp towel to clean off the edges otherwise the glue job is a complete mess.
Mistakes
The stock I used was slightly curved which caused distance issues with the laser’s focal point. Not a big deal, but I should add some weights next time to flatten out the stock
Rubber bands are not ideal for gluing things. After the initial prototype, I utilized some strategically placed clamps and the result was much better. Also, if the wood is slightly curved, I realized that you can use the curve to your advantage to put pressure on the connecting edges.
Categories
Mini Mailbox
I receive (and send) lots of packages from my front door. I love creating scaled versions of things, particularly undersized. I decided to recreate a small version of the classic USPS mailbox for my front door as a place for packages to be held.
Additionally, my idea is to add LEDs, a camera, and make it WiFi enabled so I can monitor at all times, assuming the delivery carriers understand what it’s for. Hopefully I can make it intuitive enough but still retain the classic unmistakable design.
The Materials
- 1/4 inch MDF
- wood glue
- painters tape
- blue paint
- inkjet adhesive paper
- LEDs
- WiFi camera
- adhesive spray
- colored card stock
- flexible TPU filament
The Tools
- laser cutter
- fusion360
- lightburn
- Cricut Maker
- paper trimmer
- Canon Pro-100 inkjet
- 3d printer
The Build
Mini Mailbox Fusion 3D File
1 file(s) 1.08 MB
I envisioned this to be about 2 feet tall. The parametric design would let me adjust the dimensions. The hardest part of the design (and newest challenge for me) is the curved top. So far, everything I’ve created is pretty square. For this, I’ll have to use some tricks to make the curved top.
Cutting this took forever! It’s basically an alternating pattern of cuts. In Fusion360, I measured the inner curve length, and built a new piece based on that. The outer curve length is irrelevant for this because the cuts would provide the longer length that I need.
It came out super bendy! So excited. After test fitting the top curve, in the future, I’m going to make the piece slightly shorter than the inner curve surface. Even the the top is doing most of the stretching, the bottom also stretches as well so leaving some room would do just fine. I didn’t leave any tolerance to i had to really tape down the piece well during the gluing process.
Always remember to use the correct height when setting your laser/bed distance. The laser beam is hourglass shaped, and the middle of it should be the middle of your material. I didn’t quite adjust it right so the edges were slightly angled and required a little sanding.
Emma wanted to be the first one to deliver a message in the new mailbox. She is the best!
I had a difficult time deciding on the right amount of storage. I think the majority of packages will fit in here. it’s roughly 13x13x17.
Glued all the pieces together. I used tape to hold down the top curved wood while using wood glue. Everything came together as expected!
After painting, I added the logos and also lined the inside with colorful rainbow card stock. I also added a little disclaimer label in case somebody actually believes it’s a real mailbox.
Here is the mailbox with all the logos and actually being used outside!
Updates
MDF legs on concrete are not great. I’m going to design flexible TPU feet for it to protect it from bumps and scrapes, but also leave it off the ground to prevent moisture.
Mailbox Rubber Feet
1 file(s) 30.26 KB
My original designs were built for 6.4mm MDF. I adjusted the material thickness to 8mm, then generated this STL for flexible TPU. The reason is that I’ve found that TPU needs quite a bit of tolerance. Even if there is extra room, I can fill it with glue.
20% flexible TPU infill + 2mm tolerance fit perfectly! The flexible material really helps to protect the piece and also prevent it from sliding.
Using double sided padded tape, I mounted a camera to the top and now get motion alerts. Going to finally put this project to rest for awhile. Thanks for reading!
Categories
Drink Coasters
Machines that serve a single purpose are fun. But it’s even more fun to combine different materials and machines. I decided to make drink coasters that were laser cut out of foam place mats and print 3d coasters and a holder to test all my filaments for moisture.
The Materials
- cork placemats from IKEA
- tons of different filaments (PLA and wood)
- spray adhesive
- dessicant packages
The Tools
- 3d printer
- laser cutter
- fusion 360
- lightburn
- cura
- food dehydrator
The Build
This build is pretty simple. I cut out 80mm circles from the cheap cork placements I got from IKEA.
The real reason to make these is to test my filament. All filament spools are subject to moisture which causes print quality to have issues. With PLA, you will hear cracks and pops (which is the water vaporizing at 200C) and the prints will become flakey and uneven.
Several of my PLA spools were damanged from long term exposure to humidity. If you want to test filament without printing, simply bend it and if it snaps easily, then there is moisture in it. Good dry filament should be able to be bent (permanently deformed) but not snap.
In order to fix filament, you can put it in the oven at about 140F-160F for a few hours.
I didn’t want to use the oven and preferred to do a longer slow moisture extraction, so I used my food dehydrator, removed the top, cut a circular hole in a cardboard box, and put the top of the blower in the hole. I also cut out air outlets at the bottom of the box to allow the air to flow out from top to bottom.
After drying out the filament, the prints started looking much better. No flaky surfaces or brittle filament. I then designed a holder for it that fits 6 coasters.
This special wood-infused filament can be stained like normal wood and even smells like charred wood when printing. Overall, happy with the coasters and it was a good exercise in understanding the affects of moisture and how to fix it and save my spools.
Updates
It’s not too late but I want to add engraved logos on the coasters to make them a little more interesting. Not sure what the logos should be yet, but it should be easy to throw under the laser and etch in.
Categories
Creality CR-10 Riser Kit
The CR-10 is an amazing printer. However, it does take up quite a bit of precious area in my small workshop so I decided to build a thin case under it. The computer is in the rear part of of the case, and the front will have drawers for storage.
The Materials
- 1/4 MDF
- M4 screws
- CR-10 3d Printer
- Wood glue
The Tools
- CO2 laser cutter
The Build
CR-10 Base Enclosure with Storage Drawer
1 file(s) 1.72 MB
Here is the original CR-10. There’s that big ugly box on the side of it. It’s so tall that another couple inches isn’t going to matter.
I took apart my CR-10 to examine all the wires, components, etc so I could get a good idea of where to place everything.
Here are the internals of the printer. Pretty basic stuff actually. The power supply is the biggest thing. The board for controlling stuff, the mosfet for handling high current to the heating bed, a couple fans. I also added a raspberry Pi to run OctoPrint.
Based on previous projects, I am not going to leave any tolerance for the drawer. I put 1-2mm before and there was a huge gap, so going to gamble with a perfect fit here.
I glued the drawer together to prevent any screws sticking out messing with the clearance. The main case however is bolted together with M3 hardware. Getting ready to mount the components in! I decided to add a 1mm clearance to the drawers, I think that’s the right amount for all projects going forward. I did a quick test with 0 and it was just too tight.
I used double sided tape to mount the power supply, Raspberry, and other stuff. Surprisingly all the hole cutouts I measured pretty accurately! Maybe I’m finally getting better at this.
Put everything back together, removed the printer rubber legs and let the printer sit flush on the enclosure. Everything fits perfectly, the drawer works great. I left the top screws off just in case I need to get back into the internals. Gravity does a good enough job of keeping it in place.
Back on line printing again. Steady helping to make masks/equipment for donation for this CoVid-19 thing.
Updates
I added a nice coat of matte black paint to match the printer. Normally I like to leave MDF unpainted, but wanted a more unified look for the printer.
I thought I did a pretty good job with the fan grill.
I left the inside of the drawer unpainted to make it easier to see the stuff inside.
Categories
Raspberry Pi Rubik’s Cube Case
I have a 3TB RAID1 ext4 NAS and set up a Raspberry Pi 2 to serve as a streaming media center. I wanted to come up with a cool case. Since the dual drives + Pi is roughly square-ish, I came up with the idea to make a rubik’s cube case. Initially it was just going to be a solid block, but then I decided to make it actually rotate horizontally.
The Materials
- 1/4 MDF panels
- color card stock
- Raspberry Pi / NAS hard drives, power cables
- black matte spray paint
- wood glue
- spray adhesive
The Tools
- CO2 laser cutter
- wood glue
- Fusion360
- Lightburn
The Build
Rubiks Cube Pi Case Fusion 360
1 file(s) 2.95 MB
All the panels will be made of 1/4 MDF. If you look closely, you can see the perforations between the color panels that is meant to allow air flow.
This is the most cutting I’ve ever done for a project. I used a full 2×4 and them some.
I noticed that new/dry MDF cuts much better than old or boards with some condensation. Usually I would have to pop the pieces out, but this project, everything fell out perfectly.
I used adhesive spray to add the colored card-stock to the panel pieces. I designed the panels to stick up to give the the colors texture.
The design uses a thin cut ring to allow the 3 levels to spin around. I just used wood glue to stick the thin ring to the 1st and 3rd levels, and the middle level circle is slightly larger. I didn’t leave any tolerance, but it was a tight fit and so far works perfectly.
The inside of a rubiks cube is black, so did a light spray of matte paint. Also works to hide the laser cut edges.
All that’s left is to install the hard drive and Pi. In retrospect, I made the cube a little too big. I could have spent the time to disassemble the SATA base/connectors. I might redo this to make it more compact.
Here is its final resting place, next to my router, serving media. If i didn’t make it able to turn, I could have definitely made the case smaller.
Mistakes
- built the inside too large, however, might make the most of it by adding motorized movement
- used card stock instead of adhesive vinyl, which would look more like a rubik’s cube
- the blue color i’m not a fan of, need a darker blue but we’re in a quarantine because of coronavirus
Updates
- I got new cardstock and updated the blue color to match the classic cube, so much better!
- Replaced the Pi 2 1GB with Pi 4 4GB… runs so much faster
Categories
Espresso Station
This is a little cubby drawer station I made to go with my Breville Barista Express machine. It is meant to store drink mixes, tea, espresso supplies, sugar, cups.
The Tools
- 60 watt CO2 laser
- rubber bands
- Fusion360
- Lightburn
The Materials
- 5mm birch plywood
- wood glue
- sandpaper
The Build
Espresso Drawer and Cubby Fusion360
1 file(s) 522.52 KB
The empty space will have a drawer that slides in and out for main storage of tea bags, supplies, etc.
I designed the drawer with a 2mm tolerance on all sides and found out that was way too much. I should have done 1mm or less. I put the hole handes on both sides to allow for air to escape because I assumed it would be a tight fit.
This is my first project with birch plywood. I did NOT know that the middle layers of the plywood were not 100% filled. Surprisingly, this 5mm birch cut much easier than 6.3mm MDF.
Putting together the pieces was messy. I used steel wool to brush off the ash from the laser cuts, but it still got everywhere.
I tried to sand off the dirty ash, but found out that a damp cloth worked even better to clean up all the dirty ash from the surface.
I engraved a little coffee logo on the front just for fun. In retrospect, the design is much too long, I could have made it a little more compact.
Mistakes
- top-front piece was designed with no interlocking joint and relies entirely on glue
- the 2mm gap tolerance for the drawer is way too much
- tried to sand off ash instead of wiping it down
- design too long, need to shorten it
- found out i added tolerance to BOTH pieces, doubling up on the gap
- need to engrage the logo a bit darker next time
- need to round off the fillet on the handles more to match the drawer handle
Updates
Redid the design to make it shorter, also fixed the front top piece so that it interlocks properly. I also burned the espresso logo in the front darker and rounded off the fillets.
Shortened Coffee Cubby
1 file(s) 588.65 KB