Building a FABulous desk
For my final project I will construct a collaborative desk that could be used for courses such as Fab Academy and project development or coworking. This idea came to me because some time ago I helped a teacher build one that was fabricated by Opendesk. What i have in mind is a very different kind of desk, i want it to be adaptative so that it can fit the room and the necessities of the user, it should be able to play music or attend video calls so that everyone in the desk can be part of what is going on, it should be capable of suplying power and space for atleast 8 people. Some other ideas i've had along the way are to maybe add some drawers, backpack or purse hangers, headphone, gaming controlers mounts and other features that can be done with 3d printing.
This desk has sliding modules that can be used as joints they can be mounted to make different arrangements for a desk, here is an example of how it can be put together.
On the central modules, is where tha magic happens, there will be AC outputs, a lamp that adapts to the lighting in the room, bluetooth speakers and some other features.
| XIAO ESP32 | Fotoresistors | RBG leds | Speaker | AC receptable |
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Sketching ideas
Here are the first sketches I made on a notebook, I finally settled on how the unions for the modules will be and the shapes of the legs and table, I only need to get accurate meassurements to start designing it.
In the third week which was about laser cutting, as part from the assignment I modeled my final project in scale and cutted it. I cutted it on a 1:10 scale to check if the legs I designed were able to support the weight of the table and if it didn't tilt, which it didn't so I will use that desgin for the legs on the table I just had to adjust the distance between the legs.
I needed to do some adjustments but it was a good start, because making scaled models can help us solve problems before they are presented on the real deal.
I designed the rest of the parts and made ensambled it on Fusion to check everything fitted correctly, I liked using Fusion because of the animation and rendering tools, and also because since all the models are saved on the cloud I can work from my laptop and mi pc.
This are all the necesary pieces to assemble one desk, as many desks as needed can be made.
Desk Fabrication
To fabricate this desk we need a cnc router machine, but first we must generate our G-code for the machine. I used Vcarve, this is the same software featured on my week 7 page, first i imported all the .dxf files of the desk pieces and organized them on a 1.22m x 2.44m x 15mm sheet.
Afterwards, the tool operations should be set.
This is the path the tool will follw to cut the pieces for the desk, I added a couple of extra joints in case replacement pieces are needed.
Joints
As you can see on the 3d design, multiple desks can be joint together, in order to do this I made a toolpath that just follows this so a new X,Y can be set on the point where this dovetails fit.
One is for the smaller holes the desk has on the sides and the other one is for the bigger hole on the center. You can click here to download this file
Pegboard complements
On the sides of the legs, I dessigned a pegboard based on an IKEA product so that there can be some compatibility,
Some complements can be fabricated with 3d printing, first I designed a simple hook for a backpack or headphones.
