I am one of the sound people at the church I attend. Something that has always been an annoyance, though not really realizing that it was really bothering me, was that the dB meter we have is made of a very slick plastic. It is not so much the plastic that I disliked, it was that slick plastic is slippery. I would usually make some horrible looking thing… a stack of CD covers, batteries, board tape… to try to prop the thing up. But usually it would eventually slip and fall off the ledge above the sound board. Last Sunday, whilst fighting the battle of the slippage, it occurred to me, well… I could just make something to hold the thing. That’s exactly what I did. Everything I have made to cut out on the Shapeoko has been 2D objects. They are 3D in the sense that they are not flat and you can pick them up, but they are essentially extruded 2D objects. While the stand was to be more 3D, is would be made with 2D shapes. I knew that I wanted the meter to sit at an angle for better visibility. I had the main idea laid out in Draftsight within a couple of hours (still learning the CAD thing, so it took a little longer than expected).
While this may seem completely obvious, I totally spaced on the idea that things which intersect in a pocket, at an angle, will be longer than things which intersect at a 90 degree angle. I get it (now). I had everything cut out and I started to dry assemble it when I realized my oversight. In order to make this work, I would have to get the piece spot on aligned on the Spapeoko, then extend the slot on the back, or, recut the whole top plate. I decided to try to get it aligned. While it was not a perfect alignment, it was pretty dang close for human accuracy. I am really happy with this as a first piece that had nothing to do with the building of, or accessory to the machine.
After seeing how this came together, I decided to make another one (though a little wider) for my phone with a few alterations to allow for audio plug and power USB.
