Ply-Wood Striped Cabinet

This is a step-by-step guide for my design process on making this cabinet, starting from the first steps of brainstorming, to the struggles of Fusion, and finally manufacturing. This cabinet can be used for general storage with its large size, or, in my case, to store scrapbooks. It was designed to be placed on a carpet. In this Instructables, I will have pictures of every step and explain what I learned as an engineer, and the struggles along the way.

Tools

1. CNC Router
2. Screw Driver
3. Nails

Originally, when I started the brainstorming, I didn't have a cabinet in mind. I was trying to make something I can use every day. But then I made it home and saw my Mom's scrapbook stuff lying around without a good home. So then I started to think of a design for storage for them that could fit well into her room. I worked out the idea of a Cabinet so it would fit in the corner of her room while staying settled and hiding the context in side. Then I looked up modern Cabinet design, and the pictures above are what I found that I liked the design of. And I really enjoyed the striped design to make it pop, making it more of a staple piece. When drawing out the Concept Sketch, I realized this would most likely be placed on carpet, so I need to raise it off the ground with a spacer so the cabinet doors won't rub. making friction and wearing it down quicker. Originally, when I thought of the striped design, I was going to make it so the doors had larger rectangular parts extruded out farther.Later, as you see, I changed this to half-circles, which caused me a lot of problems later.

I decided to make the prototype out of cardboard instead of 3d printing it like my classmates, because with the 3d design, I would have to skip to the CAD and come back to the prototype, and it wouldn't allow for movement without further work. I was really focusing on the hinges and making the design easier to visualize changes in the design later on, but messing with the prototype in my hands.

I brought my original drawing and prototype into Fusion and slowly extruded each part out until I got this product that matched it. But with a few tweaks, this includes the door's design and the spacer between the floor and the start of the cabinet. As I said earlier, I changed the Striped design from rectangles to a half circle, which is causing a lot of problems when trying to prepare it for the CNC router. Because with this change, I can't just use the contour tool to cut out the divits I have to try and use the adaptive tool built into Fusion, which takes a very long time to render and does not work the first time. Besides the door, I just used the 2D contouring tool to trace around the design to prepare it for the CNC Router. I changed the spacer from legs to a solid block to make the cabinet steadier on the uneven surface of the carpet and for easier manufacturing. The Picture above depicts the manufacturing part of fusion and shows the separation of the parts into 4 different sheets of 4x8s.

I have not made it to this step yet due to problems listed earlier in Fusion, but I am working to fix them and then will bring it to the CNC router to cut out in 4 different sheets.

I will use the nail gun to hold the parts together. Either the one we have at the school or at home to make the final project.