I recently played around with laser cutting 3D shapes out of cardboard. The idea was to lightly slice just the top side of the cardboard to create a foldable hinge, and then cut finger joints for the other edges, so that it can be cut as one piece and assembled without glue/tape. It was a fun exercise in geometry! I left some of these shapes on the shelf in the laser room if you’d like to take a look.
One challenge was how to make the design scalable/adjustable for different sizes or for materials with different thicknesses. boxes.py can generate parameterized faces with finger joints (link), but doesn’t support hinges. And lightburn’s “resize slots” feature doesn’t detect all the slots properly. But then I discovered that Inkscape/SVG supports “Cloning”, which can be used for making parametric-ish slots!
In the future I might try to make these out of acrylic or wood with live hinges/curf bending for the edges. And maybe also using CNC to make the faces fit tightly together without gaps/ridges.
Great post and work Robby! I assume you’ve got this in a github repo so “if ASMBLY ever had a design / CAD website” where we could post parameterized designs, yours would be a very welcome addition. Please bring them to the next Laser SIG to show off your excellent work!
