Holiday decoration
A few years back, a former coworker ordered plans from a website to make a big, lighted, star to use in his holiday decorations. His house ends up with thousands of lights…computer controlled to sync the lights with music…etc The start is over four feet tall and three feet wide.
Time and the weather have not been kind to his star…the layers of plywood it was made from are delaminating (I'm guessing it wasn't exterior rated plywood) and he was dreading hand-drilling the 200 holes for lights in a new one.
So, he asked if ShopBot could make one…piece of cake I assured him…just bring me the current version so I can pick off key measurements, etc.
I'd never tried drawing a piece like this before but it turned out to be really simple (and I learned a few parts of VCarve Pro along the way - to speed up layout).
While placing the 200 holes, I got a bit carried away before I figured out how to count how many I had…ended up with almost 500 holes and spent almost as much time thinning the herd as I did creating them in the first place…oops.
Cut the new star this morning…took about 25 minutes total with the bulk of that spent creating the 200 holes. They're inside profile cuts using a plunge-rated end mill instead of drilling (personal bias against drilling - likely unfounded but it let me avoid having to change bits between the holes and cutting the profile).
I've enclosed a picture of what's left of the original star (everything I touched it, something else fell off) and the new one. Fortunately, I don't have to stuff the 200 lights into those holes or staple all that wiring to the back.
Fun project…easy to create…might whip up a few others for decorating my own yard one of these days.
Tim S.
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