For our final half of the course, I was teamed with a group of students interested in competing. Our first of two assignments was simply to take a stock Ikea side table, and to beautify it in some way. I was presented with the object, seen below, and decided I wanted to make something useful, as well as aesthetically pleasing.
I play a lot of Dungeon's and Dragons, and I had the idea to build a mapping table out of the ikea table. Maps in DnD are often made from paper with 1x1 grids printed on them, so the idea of having a 1x1 grid cut into a permanent table really appealed. I purchased scrap sheets of acrylic, to make wall pieces to slide into the cuts i'd make, and decided on 1/8 inch grooves.The brunt of the work came with crafting the files needed for the computer controlled router I decided to use. Working by hand would have been terrifying, because I only had one table to use and no chance for mistakes. I contacted a tech to help me design the file, and after 5 revisions finally came upon a CAD file that consisted of 21 lines crossing 21 lines. I took it in, we carefully drilled to see how deep the table went until it hit the hollow center, and drilled the grid from there.
The table turned out pretty great, but I wish I could have drilled deeper. The laser-cut acrylic pieces stick up, but they have room to shift laterally because of how shallow the cuts had to be.Behold: The final table!
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