Modern Hexagon Bookshelf

Hi I'm Matthew Davids from Illiana Christian High School. Mathew is the taller one. I am partnered up with my good friend Ian Postma. We are building a hexagon bookshelf for this project. This is both for fun and for a grade in our CIM (Computer Ingrated Manufacturing) class at Illiana Christian high school. We are both sophomores and are passionate about engineering.

For this project we used a large amount of things that we are so blessed to have.

- 1 CNC router

-2 CNC clamps

-1 box of 1 1/4 " screws

-1 drill

-1-2 1/2" 60 degree Vbits for CNC router

-1 table saw

-3 4' by 8' wood panels

-1 tape measure

-1 computer with Fusion360 and VCarve

-5 pieces of sand paper

-1 electrical sander (optional)

-1-2 16oz bottle of wood glue

-1 role of painters tape

For our first step we thought of what we wanted our bookshelf to look like. We came up with many ideas but these were our best two. The first design is of a hexagon bookshelf. The second being a modern box style bookshelf. With these two designs we decided to go with the Hexagon shelf because we wanted a challenge and because we think that it might just win.

Our second step is figuring out how big we wanted our bookshelf to be. We want it to be big enough to fit in a space and not look huge. We did multiple calculations until we got it the desired height. Both of us decided that we would have 12 hexagon in our shelf.

We designed the base of the hexagons in fusion so we could generate what the bookshelf would look like when it was finished. The hexagons were too big from our original designs so we had to shrink them a little more so it would be more efficient.

We measured the 4' by 8' slab of wood to see how we could cut it out and we decided that we would cut 18" by 25" pieces. Out of one 18" by 25" piece we can get one full shelf. We can make 5 18" by 25" pieces out of one 4' by 8' slab.

We started with a big 4' by 8' slab and we cut it down to two 8' by 25" pieces and then down to 5 18" by 25" pieces. We then proceeded to put screws in the slab so it would stay on the CNC machine, although we did still put clamps on the back. The CNC machine is not super fast or efficient and we broke our V-bit. We decided to use the table saw after we made one shelf. After we change that we started zooming through.

We took 6 8" by 9" pieces and made sure they fit together nicely then glued with wood glue them and taped them ( to hold them when the glue dried). We glued them in groups of three. Then we put the groups of three together to make one hexagon. We then took three hexagons and glued them to make the base. We repeated that until we had 8 then put two more on the top to finish it.

First they didn't fit together perfectly so we used some thin pieces of wood we cut to size as a spacer to make it fit nicer. We finished the shelfs by sanding the front down so it has a smooth flush finish.