Ever since a friend introduced me to Ponoko a while ago, I have wanted to work on a project that would make use of their laser cutting service. They offer an array of materials to cut as well. I wanted to make something that didn’t consist of many parts (kind of a thing with me). I had been looking out a window in the house where we are living and visualizing a bird house or feeder out there. I looked around on the web for modern looking birdhouses without finding too many. Most were pricey to boot. That encouraged me to pursue designing one with the vague notion of possibly selling it through Etsy eventually. Using packaging as  inspiration, I began to draw some forms that could be made by heat-bending acrylic (which Ponoko offers in various thicknesses and colors).

Initially I came up with something that looked like this:

I decided to change the design to add a bit more protection from the elements. The great thing about creating this in Solidworks is that I can treat the part like sheet metal with bent flanges. Then I can flatten it and export a perfect pattern to be used for laser cutting.

Once I converted the pattern to an Illustrator EPS (the preferred format for Ponoko), I sent the file off to be cut. The turn-around for this job was over 3 weeks. I know that is fast for this sort of service, but of course I wish it were faster (even when I upgraded my account at one point, it was still 2 weeks or so). What I got back was this:

To make it more economical, I put 2 parts on a single sheet. Not entirely sure just how well the acrylic would bend, I made one part with long perforations and the other with scoring marks to guide a straight edge when bending. I made a mold out of pieces of MDF using a CNC router to bend the plastic around. Even with this planning, both parts failed. The part with the scoring was too hard to accurately bend along each edge. The shorter flanges looked horrible. The other part was much easier to bend. Unfortunately the perforations were too long causing the flanges to warp slightly. The next version would have perforations but they would need to be smaller and cover the entire edge evenly. Bending then should be a cinch.

This proved to be the case as the next images will show.

Feeling confident about the process, I began to make adjustments to the original design and create a few more variations. This would also mean needing to make additional molds. For accuracy’s sake, the pieces for the molds needed to be cut using a CNC router using digital files that were derived from the main files. The pieces that I would make look like this:

With an order in at Ponoko, I decide to investigate setting up shop at Etsy. More in part 2.