Press-Fit Construction, 3.5th attempt
After a full day of work at my secret nondescript office job where I manipulate files in an actual filing cabinet while listening to audiobooks, I decided I would ride the rush-hour train from Boston back to Providence for one last crack at the press-fit assembly project.
Upon arriving at AS220, however, I was dismayed to discover that the laser-cutter was already occupied, and would remain so until 9pm. The final train back to Boston leaves at 10pm, so I was faced with the prospect of sleeping in the lab, which I wasn’t even sure I’d be allowed to do since I had not been given my key yet and would have no way to lock up after everyone left. The person operating the laser cutter indicated that she might finish earlier than 9pm, though, so I went out for a coffee and pondered my options.
Upon arriving back at the lab, I decided I would at least stay until 9, just in case the cutter freed up at an earlier time. As an experiment/last-ditch act of desperation–and as a way to keep myself occupied whilst waiting for a turn with the laser–I pulled out Press-Fit Construction Attempt #3 (which didn’t cut all the way through), and decided I would just cut the damned thing out by hand.
I laid the half-cut pattern on top of a cutting mat, and using an Xacto knife and a ruler, I went over all the lines of the design multiple times until the blade passed through to the other side of the wood. I had to be extra careful on the “joints” so as to not split the wood with the pressure of the blade.
After about an hour of handwork, The components could be popped out of the wood panel. With trepidation I gingerly gave the joints a tentative bend. They seemed stabile enough to bend the full 90 degrees, so I went ahead and attempted to assemble all the parts. Miraculously, they fit together pretty well, and I was able to get the whole box together without breaking everything. Even the glass panel fit handsomely in its frame.
I’m calling this project “done”.
There are a *lot* of things I’d like to modify about this box. I’d like to figure out a way to cut everything cleanly on one pass. I’d like to modify the back a little bit so that I can integrate a wall-hanger into it. I’d like to add an extra layer to the front so that the glass is held in a more stabile way. I’d like to paint the whole box, or better yet try assembling it out of acrylic. I think it would look neat in white acrylic. It would also be nice to modify the spacing and placement of the tabs to perhaps create a nice visual pattern at the front of the box. The tabs could fit together better as well and need some tweaking to better accommodate the thickness of the material.
Also, if this is going to be a real display case, there needs to be a good way to open and close it. Probably a final version would have to have all the pieces glued together, so there’d need to be some kind of access panel or something. Then again, maybe not. How cool would it be to have a display case that snaps together and can be fully disassembled, packed flat, and then reassembled again?
I’d like to do a bunch more boxes using this design as a jumping-off point. The boxes don’t need to be square. They could be hexagonal, or even round. This current box is as-yet unsuitable for displaying my sculptures, especially since some of them occupy a more rectangular space.