Life-size weighted companion cube

[Turret]

Cool, where can I get one?!

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/11/27/funde-razor-07-grand.html

 

[morgs]

They've got black on them...and they're aren't blocky enough :\

 

[Zombine]

They've got black on them...and they're aren't blocky enough :\

Emo cubes?

 

[Lord Nod]

There are people who make their living fabricating things out of metal. Surely one of them could make a WCC. I don't understand why they're making them all plush anyhow. Surely they aren't too cheap to at least make a hard plastic one right? Anyhow, there's obviously TONS of money to make off of marketing of this thing. Next there'll be WCC monitors and CPU cases.

 

[Druckles]

They look fake. Definitely not worth investigating.

There are people who make their living fabricating things out of metal. Surely one of them could make a WCC. I don't understand why they're making them all plush anyhow. Surely they aren't too cheap to at least make a hard plastic one right? Anyhow, there's obviously TONS of money to make off of marketing of this thing. Next there'll be WCC monitors and CPU cases.

Already considered. I keep applying the WCC to everything :S. Starting to disturb me. You'd take a shuttle case, and mod it up a bit into a cube. Wouldn't be too hard from there.

 

[scotland1]

They look like shit. They should of made them out of plastic with a foam cover to be more square.

 

[Para]

Angles and such aren't hard unless you fail at math. Otherwise I perfectly understand your rant about prices.

 

[Lord Nod]

I can see how one person crafting them would be difficult but wouldn't it be much easier in mass manufacture? Surely with all the details and such they put into plastic action figures now days they could make some sort of mold to mass produce weighted companion cubes. They make a lot of cool stuff out of plastic surely a WCC isn't beyond capability. A metal one is slightly less feasable but surely with some stamping and careful welding it could be done.

 

[Cheomesh]

Sure, but the difference is incredible when you throw a manufacturing company into it.

If it's an actual company designed for that, they usually have computers that will help accurately graph and cut the measurements, mold them, and then mass produce them all with the use of machines.

But a person working on it as a project, wayyyy hard. Completely different story.

Yeh; I had considered making one from wood and using it as a chest but man would that be hard. The curves on the faces especially.

 

[Para]

Hahah, if only it were that simple.
(snipped wall of text)

OK, I'm going to do this from the top of my head now so the measurements won't be accurate, however the techniques should apply.

First, material of choice. People seem to think some sort of hard plastic/lexan is a good one to work with and while it surely is light and end result should be smooth, it melts and can be a pain to work with. I'd personally choose some sort of wood, possibly thick plywood for the base material. Metal is a no-no mainly because it's a bitch to work on.

So, the companion cube has three main parts in the following order of difficulty: Inner cube, heart emblems and corner pieces.

1# Constructing the inner cube

Should be pretty straightforward, get 6 1m by 1m pieces of plywood, glue/nail them together leaving one or two sides unattached at this point and that's it. I'd personally do some sort of cornering to the edges so that instead of having overlapping structure there would be a 45 degree slope on the edges so that they slide together nicely. I'd do this to the so that the inside of the cube would be less than 1m*1m*1m which of course means that the outer shell would be 1m*1m*1m.

#2 Constructing heart emblems

Yay maths! Well not really, just get a pile of plywood (6 to be exact), attach them together firmly, hit a nail to about the center of the top one, tie a normal pencil with about 20cm long string and draw a circle. Use a hacksaw/bandsaw/something like that to cut six rough circle shapes, use sandpaper and file to get the edges smooth. If one wants to make the edges of these emblems nicely curved or just angled (45 degrees again most likely or round for accuracy) there's a lot of carving pieces for various drills and routers one could use at this point. Just remember to make sure that the piece you're working on doesn't move at all when you're using powertools, those things can get hazardous if not handled properly.

#3 The corner pieces

I'd questimate that each corner piece is about 35cm*35cm*35cm big with various bits and pieces cut away. The hardness of these pieces depend on how accurate one wants them to be. The way I'd do these would be similar to the emblems, get 24 35cm*35cm pieces of plywood, pile them in a set of 3 or 6 (if there's too many in one pile it'll get very hard to make 'em) and use the pencil-on-string thing to draw another circle. At this point it's important to notice that some measurements have to be taken so that the curvature of the circle matches its relative location so that it doesn't look odd. After that just cut the extra parts and what you should now have is the base for corner pieces.

But alas, it's not that easy! What now has to be constructed is the small bits which connect these three slabs together. I'm talking about the absolute outer edges of the cube here. What those pieces look like is something like \_/ (imagine a line on top of that cruddy ascii art) with 45 degree angles.

So now we have odd looking corner bits. If you try to fit these on the box at this point you should see a lot of holes, mainly around the middle part of the box edges (should be L shaped but otherwise very angular, use thick plywood and router bits on drill to get the desired match - you'll need 24 of these too) and then between the curved part and the box surface. This is where measurements are once again important because now you'd have to do curves that match the curvature of the related area AND isn't too thick or thin so that the piece fills the gap.

What's left is 12 of those middle edge things. They're basically two L shapes, two square pieces and some similar riser pieces as above, all glued, carved and sanded together to look good.


After all this it should need some assembly and then paint and it should be done. Also note that since this is the first time I even put some thought on this there's bound to be errors. Important part is that one doesn't actually have to calculate anything, a lot of the work can be done just by eyeballing the thing. Another pointer is that when drawing those circles one most likely could use one sheet as a base to cut out several needed shapes at once but for this I would have to be at home to do some proofing to actually see how the pieces would actually fit together on a slab of plywood.


BTW, all this is licensed under Creative Commons and as such you can't make profit based on anything I just wrote here unless you contact me and make a special signed agreement with me. This is mainly because I hate artists who think they are right just because they find some particular related area extremely hard and think they have the right to say that others are wrong just because they're supposed to be the big-balled artists Who Know Things.

For more info about the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

 

[Iron_cube]

zombieturtle just got massively owned, me thinks. :cheese:

 

[Druckles]

Should be pretty straightforward

I stopped reading.

For someone who snipped a wall of text, you didn't really think about the word "straightforward", did you?

 

[Para]

I stopped reading.

For someone who snipped a wall of text, you didn't really think about the word "straightforward", did you?

There's a difference about posting a page full of flames and page full of instructions.

Think about it.

 

[Lord Nod]

Someone should just cut one out of marble. Then it'd be an extremely weighted companion cube.

 

[Cheomesh]

Someone should just cut one out of marble. Then it'd be an extremely weighted companion cube.

I could theoretically make you a small one in Bronze or Copper.

 

[flamekiller]

Zombie Turtle is right, to build a companion cube or any sort of weighted cube as an individual project, from scratch, would be quite difficult. I do have relevant information, though. This.
All the corner/edge stuff has some pretty complex curves and angles. I was thinking about building a case myself until I realized just how complex it would be. There's only so much my unskilled hands can do with a Dremel.

 

[Para]

(Para is gunna be mad because he stole "his" lisenced idea! *rolls eyes*)

I did point out that it's the individuality of that particular forum post that's licensed, come up with your own alternate manufacturing plan (mine is hardly the most efficient) and that's it, you're scot free.

Legal things and "art" people, pffh...

 

[flamekiller]

Hey turtle, do you have a thread chronicling your progress with your project? I'd be interested.

 

[Cthrag Yaska]

I browsed your Deviant Art zombieturtle01, bugger me i'm impressed VERY nice work with the headcrab sculpture.

 

[Druckles]

Omg! That Zombie is just awesome ZT! +4*!