Space Shuttle simplified cnc/laser

thingiverse

Starting in 1981, the Space Shuttle soared through the skies with an impressive 135 flights, effortlessly carrying up to 24.5 tons of vital material into Low Earth Orbit. It's safe to say that the Shuttle was the trusty workhorse of NASA. Except for the Enterprise, all orbiters were named after famous sailing ships. My model was painstakingly crafted on a desktop CNC machine by Stepcraft from 6mm beech plywood, using a precise spiral-toothed 1.2 mm flute. With every joint carefully glued and smoothly sanded, it's an amazing toy that boys of all ages will love. A laser cutter could also be an excellent tool to create smaller versions with ease. For more exciting designs, visit https://www.zenziwerken.de/en/Spielsachen/Flugzeugmodelle. Remember, the STL file is merely for validating construction and viewing in the browser. How I Designed This I began by taking 3-view drawings of this plane from Wikipedia to avoid tedious tracing. Next, I used Illustrator to meticulously carve out the main features. The slots were a result of trial and error. Before building the plane, I performed a thorough 3D validation in SketchUp. Then I carefully nested the parts as close together as possible for efficient production on a CNC router.