Surface I-IV

Project Description:

Brandon Beatty and Nate Holland worked with the CNC machine at UNL to create this series of decorative wall panels. We started the design with a series of contour lines which we used tocreate the 3d surface in Rhino 4.0. We wrote a proximity script in Grasshopper to create the grid of circles and control their size based on their distance from our highest contour lines. The back side of these panels have a groove carved into them so that they can be mounted on a bracket system that follows the highest contour path. We used 2, 2.5, and 3 axis milling processes to make this form(2-mounting system, 2.5-holes, 3-surface).

Process:

We first laminated two 3/4" pieces of MDF together. Once it had dried, we placed the panels on the CNC machine to mill the groove in the backside. We used markings on the CNC bed to re-align the panels and cut the front side of the panels. We used a 1/2" flatmill to do the horizontal roughing followed by two parallel finishing passes with the 1/2" ballmill. Then we painted the panels with 4 coats of white paint. After re-aligning the panels on the CNC bed we used both the 1/2" flatmill and the 1/4" flatmill to cut the holes using a profiling operation. When it was finished we cut the panels down to the desired size.

Project Stats:

Number of panels: 4 (though the system works on a variety of sizes)

Size of the panels: 18"x36" with 2" spacing

Materials: MDF, Glue, White Paint

Production time: 33 man hours (not including design time)