Dome Shelf

This project was originally conceived as a test to calibrate and flex my own CNC machine and begin to develop a feed and speed table unique to my machine. It quickly grew into something else. I saw something like this shelf online and knew I could make one. But what I really wanted to do was make it parametric. 

I wanted to be able to input a radius, a height, and a number of divisions and have the script output the cuts nested on a 4x8 sheet.

It had several design challenges. The first was the joint method. The cut parts had to slide together. This meant that the slotted cuts had to be the width of the panel. This would mean that the material selected had to be thicker than the diameter of the CNC bit. Not really a problem, but ¼” bits are not the best for a lot of cutting.

In the end, I learned the Mach4 settings were not calibrated correctly. I spent several weekends redoing and calibrating the settings unique to the Pokey’s board I had. Ultimately I got the machine calibrated, but it was a long process. 

On to the modeling, as that was the engaging part. This first script did what I wanted. Input parameters were radius, height, and X/Y divisions. Using a nesting plugin I was able to get all the way to nested parts.

This worked pretty well. What I explored next was how to make parametric domed surfaces to make the final shape more interesting. I went down the rabbit hole of 3 and 4-centered arches.