This is my physical print, it was done with clear acrylic laser-cut pieces glued together with crazy glue.
(At the end there's a 3D print version!)
So I laid out 32 pieces to laser cut which I thought was enough, but it surprisingly still too thin compared to my rendered file. Which is fine because the table is suppose to be adjustable for width, angle height, and amount of curves/grooves/waves. And glueing it together wasn't perfect either because some pieces wanted to shift right before the glue dried so it created a wavy shape in every other angle too... yay...
And some of the pieces were cut on a non-flat surface of the acrylic, which is weird I didn't know that could have been an issue until now. I glued together pieces 2 by 2 then join those to 4 by 4, then 8 by 8. At this point is where I found the issue, where there were random gaps in between the laser-cut pieces (see pictures below) and no matter how much I try to sand the edges, it would not go together. Thats how slanted those random pieces were...
Then I thought I'd try to use epoxy resin to fill the gaps... Ha ha... big mistake. For some reason it had a chemical reaction or something so the acrylic pieces that were touching the epoxy tinted yellow... Not just the surface because I tried sanding off the first coat, it actually tinted the INTERIOR!!! So I had to break apart my lap desk that was basically done, and re glue them together. So I'm not fully happy with the way this end result looks as of right now, it is cool that it's a clear table and all but the glue residue, sanded bits, uneven pieces laid together... It's not what I would have wanted my project to look like so if I have time this week I'm going in to 3D print a version that's more accurate to what my render looked like. Just in case my "at a scale" model is suppose to look exactly like my parametric render, because it doesn't right now and I want it to look better than the laser-cut piece. I'll bring in both on Friday but ahhhh frustrations, we'll see what happens. I kind of wished I didn't glue them together to be honest, not sure how that would have stayed in place but they looked perfect before I glued them together... Enjoy my process of making and peeling the acrylic down below!
After laser-cutting it
Breaking the pieces apart
After peeling off the films off both sides of each laser-cut pieces
Gaps
Height difference because the thin pieces were a little flimsy
This is when I applied the resin
This is the yellowing after the resin was left overnight, semi dried but definitely tinted beyond repair...
SURPRISE! I thought about it and I couldn't get past myself. I went to 3D print it literally after my initial post (on friday) because I felt like I could have done better. So I did better. Of course not without struggles though...
3D printing something as tall as my table, I already knew I couldn't just print it as tall as it is right now. So I sliced it in half and printed them separated on two printers at the same time. Somehow my trusty old tango that I always print with failed me twice before the final one printed right and it was the only one with a skirt.
All 4 prints came out with a weird section about 10 layers in where it shifts or "melts" and thats where the lifting began. Which surprised me that even the last print I made with a skirt, it still lifted up a bit. You can see it in the side by sides of the two big pieces together. Really strange, not sure fully how I'd fix it but that was a strange situation I couldn't fix. The left smaller piece in the 2 halves side by side pictures, that print fell over 6 minutes before finishing, like right when I was about to do the whole New Years count down in excitement that it would work, the whole thing tipped over and burnt a small spot on the curved turn... Anyways, here's some final render photos. Enjoy little Carmen being used as a prop along with a mechanical pencil and an old cinema ticket.
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