DIY Wunderkammer

"Whats a Wunderkammer," you say? Well, a Wunderkammer is a shelf, or cabinet, to store one's unique collection of trinkets, or objects. A display box for your most awesome and absurd goods.

I had never heard about Wunderkammer, or curiosity cabinents, until I was in college and studying the history of museum culture. Wunderkammer were not originially confined to one cabinet, in fact they were giant rooms where one could see the taxanomic structure of one's strange possesions. Early Wunderkammers were often filled with specimens, rocks, art, and other trinkets. The more diverse your curiosity cabinet, the more prestigious you could think you were.

I wanted to build one to hold tiny robots, windup toys, and other small modern wunders - like my collection of shattered iPhones.

Step 1 Modeling and Design in AutoCAD

I considered what kind of objects I was going to include in my Wunderkammer, and designed my shelves based on the dimensions of the items I wanted to include.

In AutoCAD, I made a system of rectangles within rectangles, with a .25 inch border, to account for the thickness of the material I was going to use for fabrication. After the I had mapped out the rectangles, I used the PRESS/PULL tool to lift the structure 4 inches in the z-plane.

After you have a shape that you like, select all of your model (ctrl/cmd+A), and export the file (ctrl/cmd+E) to an .stl file so that you may import your design into the next step.

I have included .dwg and .stl files of my design.

Comments

[loanshark]

"like my collection of shattered iPhones."

Thats too funny.

Thinking about building this next week if I have time.

[ckrisch]

well...wunderkammer is german and means nothing else than "chamber of wonders"...so the idea of the shelf fits not 100%, but wouldn't be a destroyer of the general idea ;o)