This week I made a lot of progress on the design of my jersey frame project. After Milo showed me the basic of the router last week, I decided that I can entire frame in the shop and I don't need to go to carpentry, I would just have to change the design. The router can only cut from looking up just like the laser cutter, so I ran into the issue of how I'm gonna cut the LED strip channel along the inside of the frame. Milo had the idea to make two layers of the frame, one with the channel and the second on top with the indents for the hinges and magnets. That sounded good until we ran into the issue of how everything would be kept together if the four sides of the frame were cut with a 45 degree angle at the corners like they were in my original design. We figured out that instead of doing that, I could make four L shaped piece on the bottom layer with the indent for the LED strip, then a layer on top with the hinges and magnets. After a couple days of modeling and going though designs with unconstrained lines, the bottom and most complicated layer was finished. The top layer was much easier because I already had the frame for it, so that look much less time.
The next step was to model the left side of the frame, which is the cover. I decided to make the pieces interlocking because I faced the same issue of how to keep the four sides together. I could just cut the whole frame with one piece, but the material on the inside would be wasted, but I still might do that if I nothing else works. I have the problem that the top and bottom piece have cuts on one side to interlock, but they also have the cut for where the plexiglass is going to be laid in, which cannot be done on the router. Milo suggested I used L brackets to keep everything in place, but it would look messy and I'm not a huge fan of it. For now though, the model is complete in CAD and it's a good place to go off of. Before I figure that problem out, I wanted to make a test piece for the hinges to make sure they fit before I cut the big stuff out. The hinges in the model that I found in the McMaster-Carr library last year don't even match up with the physical hinges that I have, so I remolded the hinge indents to match up, but I still want to test it. Next week I'll use the router by myself to make the test piece, and after that I'll have the experience to finally cut out my jersey frame.
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