// Cambridge, MA

week 8: computer-controlled machining

this week's assignment was to make (design+mill+assemble) something big. unfortunately, the harvard section didn't get the shopbot until tuesday, so i just did the first few design steps.

my girlfriend is very particular about her laundry. right now, she has one big hamper, and then when it's time to do laundry she does a step of sorting it into lights, darks, and dry clean piles. my thought for this week was to build her a three-part hamper so that this sorting can be done when putting dirty clothes away, saving time and effort.

i started out with pen and paper, and figured out the best way to lay out the design would be to have a horizontally subdivided bottom piece with 10-inch square openings for laundry on the top, and i believe i can get it to be about 20 inches tall given this constraint laid out on a 4-by-8 piece of plywood.

i then laid out the design in fusion 360, parameterized and properly constrained. it feels like i'm getting marginally better at CAD but still have a long way to go.

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a few weeks later, i finally got access to the harvard cnc machine.

i added press fit joints so that my design would actually assemble:

after being trained on the machine, i got my dxf files loaded and arranged, and started cutting!

unfortunately, the board i was cutting was of a different thickness than my measurements had been based on weeks ago. as such, i had to do a few passes increasing cut depth to actually make it through my board.

but three hours later, i had all my parts cut:

unfortunately, the thickness issue caused another, much more major problem: the slots that i designed to be the width of the board ended up being too small for the board i actually cut. i thought i might have been able to get away with it as it was only a matter of 0.04 inches, but no matter what i tried i couldn't get my final design to come together.

a valiant but fruitless effort this week.