Large Scale Central

Curved Roof construction/laser cutting?

General Discussion
#1

Anyone have any leads for a fellow hobbyist who would be willing to do a small styrene laser cutting? I can do the CAD designs, but I dont have a laser to cut the styrene.

Here’s my project. I need to make about 30 curved roof ribs for my snow dozers roof. I was thinking about cutting them out of .030 to .060" thick styrene and than gluing the bottom and top sheets over the ribs.

My first idea was to 3D print a 1’ scale section of the roof and cast copies. The 3D print turned out, and the castings turned out but when I glued them together the test section of the roof was brittle and uneven, requiring a lot of sanding. In hindsight I should have designed the 3D print to have a locating pin for each piece. Since I didn’t want to buy more RTV quite yet, I thought laser cutting roof ribs would be an easy solution.

I also tried laminating .010" sheets over a 5 gallon bucket (the radius was close to what I need) but that didn’t turn out either.

Thoughts, ideas?

#2

Craig,

Try these guys. They have many materials and are reasonably priced. You can upload your files and they will give you a quote in a day or two.

Laser Cutting Link

Chris

#3

Thanks Chris. I will have to look and see what the cost might be. I also contacted Alan of the Gal Line to see what he said. Depending on the cost it might be more coat effective to order a new indexed 3D print and cast.

Now I really don’t want to work on getting ready for the first day of school… I want to play around with creating a CAD file.

#4

One thing you need to remember, styrene is not really “laser friendly”. It has a tendency to melt at the cut. Your edges will be rougher and need more cleanup that cutting it out of something like acrylic.

#5

Craig post your drawing here lets see it

Dennis

#6

Radius is 11.17"