I needed a place for my jewelry on my nightstand. It typically all ends up in a pile. I wear earrings a lot so I needed something like a plate to lay them on. It would also be nice if I could use the cactus arms to hang necklaces if needed. Here's a link to my fusion file.
I decided to make a five-inch disk as a base using one-inch thick foam. I used the peg method to flip the disk, where I placed four 1/4" peg holes in a 5.5" x 5.5" square around the disk. The disk was symmetric, so I had no problems with alignment during the flip. I started by drilling the peg holes in the foam first, followed by the bottom spiral cut, using double-sided tape to hold the foam in place. I then removed the foam and drilled the same peg holes into the MDF below. I then placed the 1/4" wooden dowels in the MDF for alignment and again used double-sided tape to secure the foam. On the top, I first cut the cactus hole and then transferred the bits for the top spiral. The top spiral did not cut the edge all the way through so I had to use an exacto-knife to remove the plate from the rest of the foam body. This was actually very good because if it was cut through completely around the edges it's likely my plate would have gone flying, possibly damaging the design or the equipment. The ultra-thin edges where impossible to cut clean, but it was easy to clean it up with some very fine sandpaper.
I wanted the top of the plate to have a spiral pattern and the bottom to be smooth, so I decreased the step size but used the same 1/4" round bit. I used the 1/4" flat bit for the peg holes and the cactus hole so that they would both have flat bottoms.
I decided to make a five-inch disk as a base using one-inch thick foam. I used the peg method to flip the disk, where I placed four 1/4" peg holes in a 5.5" x 5.5" square around the disk. The disk was symmetric, so I had no problems with alignment during the flip. I started by drilling the peg holes in the foam first, followed by the bottom spiral cut, using double-sided tape to hold the foam in place. I then removed the foam and drilled the same peg holes into the MDF below. I then placed the 1/4" wooden dowels in the MDF for alignment and again used double-sided tape to secure the foam. On the top, I first cut the cactus hole and then transferred the bits for the top spiral. The top spiral did not cut the edge all the way through so I had to use an exacto-knife to remove the plate from the rest of the foam body. This was actually very good because if it was cut through completely around the edges it's likely my plate would have gone flying, possibly damaging the design or the equipment. The ultra-thin edges where impossible to cut clean, but it was easy to clean it up with some very fine sandpaper.
I wanted the top of the plate to have a spiral pattern and the bottom to be smooth, so I decreased the step size but used the same 1/4" round bit. I used the 1/4" flat bit for the peg holes and the cactus hole so that they would both have flat bottoms.
The machine shop at Trinity bought foam similar to the purple insulating boards from Home Depot, which ran about 62.4 cents per square foot. I used about 5.5 square inches of one-inch thick board, so this came out to about 26 cents per plate. I used about 2" of 1/4"-diameter dowels, which comes out to a total of about 3 cents. I used recycled cardboard for the cactus so that came at no cost and took about 30 minutes to design, two minutes to cut. Luckily, I was able to do the whole thing in one go, but it took about 4 hours to design and 1.5 hours to cut and prep the first time. At $10/hr for design and build time, the first disk costed about $60.29. For multiple items, it should only take about 10 minutes to cut each disk and cactus with 10 minutes for sanding/flipping/prepping, for a grand total of $20.29 per plate.
Jessica Rodriguez
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