Laser Cut Periodic Table

thingiverse

Cubes? Yeah, cubes. Each element is a six-sided cube that has information on five of the sides. I didn't know what I wanted on the sixth side, so I left it blank when I made the table. I originally had a two-dimensional table that I wasn't caring for; I had all these dice out of each wood type we had on hand, and I had an idea to make my periodic table use cubes, then designing began. The cubes were designed with one of those web-based make-a-box programs, with the outside dimensions of 0.85 of an inch. This was the smallest I could make it with strong enough tabs while also making it the largest I could make it to fit 18 columns of the cubes on the table. The table design is your typical periodic table design with groups and columns and whatnot. The spacing of the table is critical; I had to fit 18 columns and 9 rows (7 plus 2) as well as all the descriptive text. The space between the squares is simple - I put the squares the cubes fit inside by side to each other, selected one of the squares, and hit the arrow key four times. That's it. The space between the squares is four units of measure in Inkscape (used to make the SVGs). I made the corners of the table rounded just for personal style. The table is cut from 1/8-inch maple plywood proof-grade material. Each of the rest of the cube sides are also from the same material. The rest of the table is made from three pieces of 3/16-inch plywood I had lying around for playing with. Two of the three 3/16-inch pieces have the squares cut out and the basic table shape cut out, while the third piece of 3/16-inch is just the table shape cut out and used as the back of the table. Maximizing the material, I made one of the cube sides be cut out of the front of the table itself, as you can see in the pictures. Cutting the element symbols out of the table face also makes for a nice effect, as any grains in the wood will follow through each element cube across the whole table. Designed this way, there is actually a tight fit on the cubes once all glued together. I left the proof-grade paper backing on the insides of the cubes while gluing them to give a little more thickness to the gaps between the cube pieces. This meant that I have less than 50% of the time it took to cut/engrave/score the whole thing. Oh, and the peeling of the paper off each of the 720 sides... My wife was helping to clean off the cubes while I was gluing them together and giving her groups of dried cubes at a time. The table was made to fit in the Glowforge so if you're using another laser cutter that has a smaller workable area, sorry. I displayed this table at the Tulsa Maker Faire last year (2018), the Kansas City Maker Faire this year (2019), and at the Tulsa Maker Faire again this year (2019). It got tons of "OMG I want one!" or "Where can I buy one of these?" or "That's the coolest thing I've seen here!" or many other similar derivatives. I also made a cute little math facts table using the same process. Not as large but still had 600 cube pieces to put together. Phew. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3830320