Wooden Orrery: Laser Cut Project
Orrery – Laser Cut Wood Project 5 Replies I’m having so much fun with my new Beamo laser cutter! I designed and made this wooden orrery with my Beamo. It’s a mechanical toy that depicts the position of the Earth and Moon as they orbit each other and the Sun, with artwork showing the moon phases and Zodiac. See more pictures and animation: All files are open source and available on my GitHub repo (click here)! I have provided the two SVG files to be cut on the laser cutter, optimized for the Beamo but should work on any other laser. The 3D models I designed using SolidWorks is also available. Assembly instructions are provided in the repo as well. Originally designed in SolidWorks. The parts were then exported to SolidWorks drawing files, then exported to DXF files, then imported into Inkscape to be edited as SVG files. Inside Inkscape, paths were joined together to optimize cutting. Paths that represented circles, squares, and slots, were converted into basic shapes so cut tolerances can be adjusted. Finally, the cutting order was organized into layers. Beam Studio will import the layers in the order you defined them. I learned the hard way that you need to make inner cuts first before outer cuts. Otherwise, if you do an outer cut first, the piece will move after being cut free and fall onto the laser’s honeycomb bed. This means the inner cut…
