Hello everyone!

Despite the delay I’m happy to tell you I managed to assemble the first prototype of the table. Obviously, there where a few errors in the design, still less than expected though!

IT WORKS 🙂

Design : 

V.07 went into production: since it was a prototype and I wanted to save time, I made some last-time adjustments in order to counter potential failings or errors. It worked, mostly.

Here, for example, I designed an hole to set a stiffening block to balance out rigidity issues.

Process and Manufacture: 

I had two choices: either go buy the plywood panels and deliver them to the shop or let the service provide for the raw materials. Obviously the first option is cheaper, but I had no time to find a proper van / truck and a single plywood sheet measure up to 2440 x 1220 cm.

Once you ‘ve found your service, it goes like this :

Phase 1) Find the cnc service  >  send the files (get a quotation)  >  Buy the wood and deliver it  >  wait  >  go get back your pieces

Phase 2 :

Set the pieces on a table > get glue dowels and maybe few vises > assembly the pieces with dowels, glue and sand them according to the instructions > wait

Now you’re ready to play lego : )

Errors:

The biggest error was trusting the manufacturer based on the size of his company and the abundance of tools he has, without personally checking the quality of his work.

As a results I’ve received several splintered pieces. While this doesn’t subtract from the functionality of the table, it still hinders it’s overall cleanliness.

VERY IMPORTANT : find a cnc service with a spoil board system installed. This means your plywood sheet will rest screwed on top of the spoil board and the cutting edge will be able to cut the whole depth of the sheet. In my case, my service didn’t use a spoil board but had hoses installed, this meant that the last half millimeter was cut outside the machine causing splinters to happen.

Other errors involved mostly design issues. (e.g. wrong depth of dowels’ holes and too strict tolerances between joints)

Costs:

Concerning costs, one table is currently sourced out of three birch plywood sheets (I’m trying to fit it better) and it costed me 750€, material and milling,
It’s not cheap nor too expensive, but with the variations in costs due to the scarcity of materials (price of wood increased by 30% in one year time) and the Ukrainian war (here in Italy birch is mainly imported from Russia), it’s not easy to make it cheaper than it is.

Next Updates:

As shown in the pic below, V 0.8 will correct all the issues of the 0.7 prototype and include a few improvements. I’d like to make it lighter, remove the outer edge and proceed with a frameless chassis.

I’d like to fit the pieces into a shorter quantity of sheets, in order to make it cheaper and integrate the stiffening block as shown in the pic below.

I’ve yet to decide if the tightening bolts need to be kept, but if the tests are solid, I’d like it to goo too, thus the central beam would retain a cleaner shape.

Thank you for your patience,

as always feel free to join on Discord for more discussions and to download the latest release on github

G