Curve up

Module Digital Fabrication  |  Bachelor Product Design 2020

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A high-quality special part made of olive wood was created for the famous Brio wooden railway.

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For the DesignSchenken in Lucerne 2020 I made unique parts for a wooden railroad from olive wood. The olive wood adds value to the durable toy. The unique parts should differ from previous inventions and offer new variations.

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During my research I came up with the idea of creating an ascending 90 ° curve for the railroad. This can be formed into a bridge in connection with standard parts. With the 3D program Rhino I drew the curve and adapted it to the standard parts. In a next step I had to program the curve so that the 3-axis milling machine could read the file. This process was very time consuming. It took several tries before the product was properly manufactured.

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For the trial runs I used Sika blocks measuring 212×206×430 mm. The CNC milling machine took about half an hour to produce a curve. For the finishing touches, I used sandpaper to get the best result. I made two curves that go in the same direction. One leads the trains up, the other down again. To control the direction of the curves, one could mill a mirrored version of the curve which would give you a complete set.