Snaptastic Room Divider

The Snaptastic Room Divider is an attractive modular wall made up of an array of panels that are fit together with slotted connectors to make a large freestanding room divider.  It can be expanded or reduced to fit the space it's being used in.

It's always tempting to put up a project and only show the 'straight line' from concept to result-  Get these materials, do these steps and voilà a finshed project!  I don't know about you, but my path is usually a little more meandering.  I thought I'd share the design process and some of the mess-ups on the way because it's interesting.  

Step 1: Inspiration

I saw this picture of a cardboard room divider in a magazine a couple months ago and thought it was pretty cool.   Originally I was thinking that I would make my divider out of cardboard too.  I paged through a couple books on tiling and M.C. Escher for inspiration then moved on to Google to research various paper folding techniques.  

I was looking for some sort of modular interlocking design.  The paper folding patterns I found were very cool but a little too intense to imagine making in cardboard on a room sized scale.  I scaled back my ambitions and started sketching some ideas.  

I ended up with two designs that called to me.  One looked sort of like large dominoes and the other had a star design made out of the negative space where the pieces came together.  

Comments

[superbowlxlv]

When I first built my CNC Router at home I couldn't get it going faster than 20some inches a minute either. I had acme screws and I used a computer power supply to power the stepper motors. I wasn't happy with that so I got a HobbyCNC 3 axis drive and a used Acopian power supply, of the correct voltage and amps, on ebay. The difference was amazing! I can rapid traverse at over 100 inches a minute and can cut as fast as the cutter can handle. As far as losing steps and cutting a part that doesn't resemble what you drew I found out that you have to tune your stepper motors properly. Trial and error motor tuning worked for me.

[spike3579]

I just upgraded to a gecko G540 driver and it's a whole new world. Now my rapids are up to 75imp. The motors are running way smoother too. I'm still having some non-reproducible errors though.

[superbowlxlv]

Gecko drives are much better than HobbyCNC drives. I didn't know about Gecko when I built my machine and the HobbyCNC only cost me $35. I had to solder them though.

[babyshelly]

I like home interior design and creative design and would like to make proper room divider to create more private space and showing my favorate taste. Your divider seems great.

[spike3579]

Thanks.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Love to see pics of the finished product.

[sunshiine]

Beautiful! Thanks for sharing.
Sunshiine

[crowsfolly]

Holy cow this is GORGEOUS!! It reminds me of those Eames childrens playing cards that had slits in them so you could stack them together. Makes me wish I had a CNC!! Excellent 'able.

[spike3579]

Just checked out the Eames cards. They are cool. I like the images too. I can't wait to see what happens when more people have access to CNC machines. We've barely scratched the surface of the potential they offer.