“this whole thing is a shoe rack…but not a real shoe rack, more like a freaky shoe rack”
We had a pile of shoes that needed sorting out.
So I made a shoe rack. I wanted some kind of lattice cut-outs in the shelves and back for easy airflow around wet and muddy shoes, but Fusion 360 isn’t the best for making such patterns. As I can’t draw for crap, I wanted a space-filling algorithm to draw a pattern for me. So, yeah, Voronoi. I know it’s a computational cliche and over-used, but wtf, it’s easy and there’s a plug-in for Fusion 360.
The material was going to be okume ply, but I ended up with okume skins on poplar ply. This has very lightly coloured edges which really showed any burning from an overheated tool. The solution was a single flute compression bit which stayed much cooler than a two flute. Top is two flute, bottom is single.
The joints are all slightly hidden tenons into dogbone mortises. The intention was to make this self-jigging. It was close, but I put the tenons in the middle of pieces, so the corners needed some clamping to get them to behave. Lesson learnt – tenons at ends as well as centres of joints.
Danish oil and rubbing with non-steel steel wool pads to finish and shoes are now organised.
Made from the shipping crate and bits I had lying around, the first enclosure for the router did a good job of keeping down the noise and dust from the router. It was, however, too small and didn’t allow the router to use the full range of movement possible before the router started banging against the inside of the cabinet.
The second attempt works much better – 18 mm white melamine from Cut to Size in Lyall Bay joined with aluminium L section from Ullrich in Petone. Size internally is 1564 wide, 864 deep, and 582 high.
Shared Fusion 360 design, if you need: http://a360.co/2ldtj2Q
Cutting the window rebates was fun. The panel wouldn’t fit into the router, of course, so each end of the rebate on each side had to be cut with the panel sticking off the bed of the router. Four cuts, four setups, all to be lined up, and then the cut ends were joined by some careful work with a circular saw.
Turned out ok though, I just hope the glue I used to hold in the acrylic windows holds in the acrylic windows.
I bought a CNC router, a Vertigo Tech M2 from down in Westport. Lead screws, 1200×600 bed, and a frame of pretty chunky aluminium extrusion. I thought about building one, but I’d rather buy it, plug it in, have it work, and put my time into building things with it.
Design shared from Fusion 360: Router Test Box 2
What I’ve learnt so far:
Please ignore the plunge marks:
Tweaking feeds and speeds and checking accuracy like an old-school metal machinist: