Laser Cut Eiffel Tower: Design Update 5 – Platform Creation
Today I finished-up the optimization of the mesh that makes-up the base of the laser cut Eiffel Tower I’m working on for CNCKing.com – now I’m moving onto the first platform. For a model like this one, it quickly gets too busy visually to make edits so what I do is apply a dull texture to the part I’m working out so the contrast is strong – making it easier to see areas of concern such as the blue you see in the image below.
As you can see, what would have been a difficult visual task instantly becomes rather “easy” which means I can now focus entirely on designing. The other benefit to doing this is it makes mistakes in other mesh apparent (none to be seen in this case). The angles of the legs are going to be resolved by having three layers on the platform, the first will be “loose” and as the platforms gets stacked onto one another, increasingly “tighter” so that they slowly orient the legs into a locked position. I used the same process with the foundation but in a reverse order.
Doing things this way means that I don’t need to create additional pegs to serve as guides, the model itself should orientate and push itself into the right position automatically. That’s my theory at least, I won’t know this for sure until I actually cut this model but that’s a trivial detail at this point as I can fully see in my design program how things will fit together with the tolerances required.
This model will be 100% for laser and should convert well to being 3D printed as well, if this model was to be CNC table routed though, quite a lot of modifications would be required as you can’t have square inner corners and with all the “holes” in this model thus far, the scale would have to be at least 3-4x larger than what I have planned for the laser version. CNC table routers are great but have certain limitations (as lasers and 3D printers have as well – none of these technologies are 100%) that must be designed around.
Once this model is done though, I’ll probably jump into something far simpler to give my brain a break – the amount of calculations required to get to this point are too numerous to count but the worse of it is behind me once the platform is done. Overall, still having fun with this challenge and looking forward to seeing the finished 3D assembly animation I make for it… that’s the most fun part of this entire process other than people buying these plans and sending me pictures of their completed model.