gave up again.
Full sheet 3mm x 2400mm x 1200mm mdf is only ~$10.50.
Don't have a way to get it home.
grrrr.
so just went back to the square box design.
As I ran out of time with the melamine arriving today.
Just slid the polycarbonate in.
Can't believe I wasted so much money, time and effort on that ridiculous plexiglass.
Hi Barry
It looks like you are again trying too hard.
The easiest way to do what you want to do is
make a full scale mock-up using MDF or cardboard box material.
trace the required shape of the back onto either stiff paper or 3mm MDF or similar.
Told you -- simple as.
Why do you need a full sheet of 3mm MDF?
The stuff is thin enough that you can use a utility knife to cut a sheet down into pieces that will fit in your car.
For prototyping, pieces can be jointed together with Gaffer tape.
Perhaps it's time you considered dumping Sketch-up and invest in a semi decent 3-D CAD program.
H810 x L1820
Bunnings won't cut it down for you.
Might try Taits Home Timber and Hardware where they did cut down some flats sheets for me about 10 years ago.
If trying too hard translates into planning ahead and only doing it once, then guilty.
Happy to plan in a warm office instead of trial and error out in the freakin' cold shed.
or cutting material down out in the freakin' cold parking lot risking rain with my breakdown table and 18v saw.
You'll have to pry Sketchup out of my cold dead hands.
I learnt to do projections and to unwrap curved shapes using a pencil and paper nearly 45 years ago.
If I had to do it again, I'd revert to the electronic equivalent of pencil and paper.
You really only need the exact shape if you are fabricating pieces off site -- or if the piece is too big to handle.
drawing a grid and plotting a shape on a piece of MDF takes longer than tracing the same shape.
The latter technique has the advantage of correcting for any error in the construction of the supporting structure.
I like to dabble with the maths perhaps more than most, but one way I would have tackled that job is as follows.
Build the wooden part of the box with removable temporary curved MDF sloped top/back that has been cut all the way through along the line of the slot.
I would have used something like 3mm MDF with some suitably spaced vertical wooden supports/ braces.
You know the length of curved PC sheet that is involved so cut the PC to length
Lay the box over on its front and wrap the sheet of PC around the curved edges of the top and slot the PC into the groove on the bottom sheet inserting a few small tek screws to hold the PC in place.
Trace around the edges of the top curved sheet with a texta and with due allowance for the fact that there is a slot, cut out the PC with tinsnips.
Replace the temporary curved back with the permanent one with the slot in it.
Btw a good set of safety cut tin snips also leaves a nice clean safe edge on the PC.
PC? = PoliCarb?
Yep.Quote:
Originally Posted by barrysumpter
FWIW
PVC = Polyvinyl chloride
PE = Polyethylene
HDPE = High density polyethylene
HMWPE = High molecular weight polyethylene
PP = Polypropylene
ABS= Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene
PET = Polyethylene terephthalte
FEP = Fluroinated ethylene polypropylene
PTFE = Polytetrafuoroethyene.