Laser Cut Birdhouse Design

Laser cutting a super clean and simple way to make great and detailed cuts and designs in manymany ways.
I am mostly experimenting on jewelry using this machine, but for this tutorial i tried something else.
So welcome to my LASER CUT BIRD HOUSE DESIGN tutorial!!

Step 1: You Need..

You don't need much to make yourself this cute click in bird house:

1. Abviously a company,shop or another way to use a laser cutter. I am lucky to be using the EPILOG Legend exit in my university :)
2. some plywood. Ask the one in charge about maximum thickness and size of the material you can use! For my birdhouse I used a 900x600x5mm piece of plywood.
3. a piece of round wood (Ø10mm) to give the little birdy some place to sit outside his house :D
4. some string. it has to be strong enough to carry house and bird! So please don't use a thread :(
5. software to construct your personal designs and in this particular tutorial case: software to open and use the file I added for you to use. I mostly create via Rhinoceros and extract the finished data to Adobe Illustrator.
6. woodglue

Step 2: Design Work

Now that the 'materials' are clear and ready the design is necessary!
I created this bird house in rhinoceros. the 3d CAD model gives you a understanding of the final look.
One I was satisfied I exportet the drawing(lines) into an Adobe Illustrator file >>

Step 3: File

HERE IS THE FILE OF MY BIRD HOUSE: FREE FOR YOU TO USE AND GIVE IT A TRY!

Illustrator helped me arrange all things way easier for feeding the file into the laser cutter ;)
Because you get so super clean and thin cuts with this machine, you can plce all your piece really really tight together - even line on line! This way the cutter will do outlines for 2 pieces and will take shorter time working in complete! Makes everything cheaper in the end ;)

Step 4: Using the Laser Cutter

FIle is set;
material is ready.
It's time to get things cut!

Picture 1 shows the machine I use which is about to get the pieces cut.
Picture 2: I felt like engraving my design name into one of the pieces :)
But no worries, the download file is without my name. You could add yours or a symbol yourself. But be sure to have the picture and the font in vectors!!

Step 5: All the Single Pieces

..all the single pieces*sings*
Uhum.sorry.

Here you can see the finished and nicely lasered pieces of plywood I am constructing my bird house from.

• 1 front
• 2 sides
• 1 back
• 1 bottom
• 2 roof pieces

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But before I can glue everything together I have to sand some edges and correct some corners.(pic4/5) and cut a iece of roundwood.

Step 6: Assembling

Use woodglue on the edged touching each other and press the pieces together.
It's up to you if you want the fron to open or be glued on like the restof the bird house parts.

Add some string to it by using the small wholes on the birds house side and hang the house up in the tree.
You can ppaint the house or decorate it if you want!

Step 7: Finished Laser Cut Bird House

And there you go - giving a sweet little home to your neighboorhoods tiny birds!

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I hope you liked this short tutorial and therefore maybe help me out a bit.
This instructable will enter the 'Mind For Design Contest' here on instructables.com and it needs your love and votes!
So please click on the orange litte flag on the right top corner of this tutorials to vote and tell your friends about it.
Your support is highly appreciated <3
Thank you!

Wish me luck ;)

Kion