I spent most of the May Day bank holiday cutting cube piece faces. I've now finished all the large pieces, which also means I've finished all the difficult concave cuts.
I learned a couple of industrial economics facts from this.
The first is that, even on small-scale production of things such as the nine identical L-shaped faces I needed to make, it pays to specialise. That is to say, it's faster to do the first cut of all nine, then the second cut of all nine, and so on, than it is to do all the cuts of the first face, then all the cuts of the second face, and so on. That's because setting everything up for each kind of cut takes time, and doing different cuts one after another also makes me likely to forget where in the room I left the various tools.
The second thing I noticed is that, because working more efficiently allows me to do the same amount of work in a shorter time, it also means I'm doing more physical activity per unit time. So one symptom of increased productivity is more sweat. (In my normal line of work, the extra 'sweat' from increased efficiency is experienced by a data centre, so I don't notice it so much.)
I wasn't entirely sure that I'd get the cuts for the more complicated pieces right, so I made models of them in Blender. (I tried Sketchup first and found it fiddly and surprisingly buggy. Blender has been harder to figure out but I found it very slick once I discovered how to use snap-to-face.)
Here's one of my models on Sketchfab. Unfortunately that site doesn't do animation yet so you can't see how all the pieces are going to go together or what the inside looks like.
Now there are lots of boring square and squarish pieces left — 37 of them, to be precise. I can make it interesting by working out how to cut more than one of them at once without sacrificing precision.
Aside from that, I need to acquire and start cutting the wood for the frame. 34x34mm timber is readily available and will certainly be solid enough, but is a bit heavier than I'd like. I suspect I could get away with something slenderer than that, but I can't find anyone selling smaller square cross sections.
I learned a couple of industrial economics facts from this.
The first is that, even on small-scale production of things such as the nine identical L-shaped faces I needed to make, it pays to specialise. That is to say, it's faster to do the first cut of all nine, then the second cut of all nine, and so on, than it is to do all the cuts of the first face, then all the cuts of the second face, and so on. That's because setting everything up for each kind of cut takes time, and doing different cuts one after another also makes me likely to forget where in the room I left the various tools.
The second thing I noticed is that, because working more efficiently allows me to do the same amount of work in a shorter time, it also means I'm doing more physical activity per unit time. So one symptom of increased productivity is more sweat. (In my normal line of work, the extra 'sweat' from increased efficiency is experienced by a data centre, so I don't notice it so much.)
I wasn't entirely sure that I'd get the cuts for the more complicated pieces right, so I made models of them in Blender. (I tried Sketchup first and found it fiddly and surprisingly buggy. Blender has been harder to figure out but I found it very slick once I discovered how to use snap-to-face.)
Here's one of my models on Sketchfab. Unfortunately that site doesn't do animation yet so you can't see how all the pieces are going to go together or what the inside looks like.
Now there are lots of boring square and squarish pieces left — 37 of them, to be precise. I can make it interesting by working out how to cut more than one of them at once without sacrificing precision.
Aside from that, I need to acquire and start cutting the wood for the frame. 34x34mm timber is readily available and will certainly be solid enough, but is a bit heavier than I'd like. I suspect I could get away with something slenderer than that, but I can't find anyone selling smaller square cross sections.
Have you thought about metal right-angle interior bracing rather than wood? You could have those on the corners and then have wooden blocks at intervals along an edge.
ReplyDeleteAnother thought would be to take triangular batons and save half the weight there.
I have considered metal braces. There does need to be something internal all the way along each edge, though, because the face cuts are only accurate to about 1mm. Without batons, there will be open gaps at points along the edge. That's not just an aesthetic problem; if there are gaps then the EL wire can fall into the edge and be damaged.
ReplyDeleteTriangular batons would be ideal, I think. But I don't know how to make them! I need about 100m of edge, so being able to produce or acquire it efficiently is important.