So I thought about this a lot. Wireforms can appear daunting. Wires moving in various directions in space, but if you think about them 2-dimensionally (one plane at at time), it's not so bad. Now that's not to say wireform ramps can't move in 2 axis at the same time, but for the sake of simplicity (especially fabbing your own), it's easiest if we stick to this method. So I started breaking this down in the same way I would model up the wireform in solidworks. You draw a path on a plane, you create the shape that you're going to extrude along that path, then when you change direction, you typically change the plane you're drawing the path onto.
There's no reason that a "plane" can't be represented by a piece of plywood. So at first I thought "Sure, 2 pieces of wood, 2 planes. I can join these two together and simply route out my path. Then I thought about the actual routing, not so much fun. Routers are big and heavy, and not easy to keep straight. If you have a dremel with a router-like attachment, maybe not so bad, but still wavy cuts. So then I thought why not split up the separation, and the actual groove into separate pieces? yes, that's it! Get 1/2" plywood, then I can cut out the path thicknesses out of 1/4" plywood, glue them to the base piece (print out the path on paper as a template), and you've got a nearly perfect fixture to bend your wireforms against. It would look something like this:
This also eliminates the need to own a router. A $20 harbor freight jigsaw can easily create this fixture, keeping the cost of tools down to a minimum.
No comments:
Post a Comment