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UPDATED: Donkey Kong cabinet Lamp?
melarky:
I've been thinking about making a mini donkey kong cabinet for a while now, and now that I just recently found out that my wife is pregnant with our first son, I really want to get it done before he is born (early november).
I have access to a CNC machine, but I am not extremely proficient with CNC programs like Mastercam and such. The ones I use are more used for signs and decorative pieces, but they can handle a 2D cut if given the correct outline in a vector image file.
I see that jakobud.com is back up (hooray!), and he has a vector of the Donkey Kong cabinet, but it is not layed out as each sheet. It mostly just gives dimensions of the cabinet already put together. Is there an easy way to take those measurments and creat outlines of each required piece (the pieces only have to be to scale compared to each other, I can stretch the final vectors to any size I want with my program).
I'm sure there's a way, I just am not clever enough with the programs that I have (luckily this isn't my job, but just a side hobby). I am way more comfortable with photoshop than illustrator, so editing vectors is not my strong suit. But if could find a way to make the outlines of all the pieces to proportioned correctly against each other, then I could get the cabinet cut out pretty easily. Are there already files out there that have this done?
Are there any pointers on how I should start doing this (the side's I've already played with, and was able to remove the little arrows and measurment marks that jakobud had on the vector to create a 2-d outline of that, but how to make the other pieces that will be the correct size in respect to them is what is puzzling me). Any help is appreciated.
p.s. Wasn't sure if this should be posted in the artwork or general forum, moderators please move if I have this in the wrong forum...
melarky:
Well, I think I may have figured this out, but just to make sure, after I programmed in all the dimensions, I scaled it down to be about 8-10 inches tall and did a test cut last night on 1/4" birch. I started assembling it last night (just using wood glue for the small guy) to make sure all of the parts fit correctly. If it goes together well enough, I may paint it and make a lamp or something out of it (it's looking pretty fun as it's taking shape, even unpainted and rubber-banded together to hold it while the glue dries...
I may take some pics and post them if it works out ok. I may also make some other small models if this one works out. It's actually been pretty fun to cut out and put together. I only ran the CNC machine at 40 IPM (have to slow it down until we fix a problem with the y axis binding), and it still cut the small model out in like 20 minutes (I'm pretty sure I could get it cut in much less time in the future, I had forgot to set the passing depth deeper than the 1/4" of wood, so it took 2 passes for each piece when it could have easily cut through the 1/4" in one pass). It will also speed up once the y-axis is fixed. Fun stuff.
Kevin Mullins:
Being a machinist myself, mostly conventonal, it would be awesome to have a CNC mill around to play with. The modeling work sounds like a blast. I'd like to do some mini cab work sometime as well. Be sure to come back and give us a look.
melarky:
I got the mini (9" tall) cabinet put together (realized I had forgot to cut the back panel, oh well, I'll do that later). I also painted it, but I messed up (I used an airbrush to paint the inside black and the sides and front pieces blue, but then I used a brush to try to paint the edges where the t-molding would go white, and it looked horrible). I sanded it all (not to bare wood, just smooth), and will re-paint it this week (will probably ditch the airbrush and go with just rattle cans, kept getting clogs in my air brush). I will post some pics once I have it more complete.
We also cut our first PCB on our CNC machine. Just a simple board that powers a few LEDs to say "KONG". I couldn't fit it all the way across, so it is actually spelled out like:
KO
NG
Should be good enough for what I want to use it for. I bought all the parts to make it a lamp, and I will have it turn the "KONG" LED's on and a superbright LED on for the marquee with one click, then turn the lamp on with the second click. Kind of like a night light type of thing. It looks horrible (the PCB), but it works. We made a few mistakes as this was our first board (forgot to mirror it so that we could mount the LEDs flush on the board, had to offset them a little, but I think it looks awsome when lit up, and we'll put it behind some smoked plexi which will make it look great).
Kevin Mullins:
That sounds like a nifty little project.
Can't wait to see it all together.