The fourth fabrication assignment focuses on enclosures. I continued my series of absurd and user unfriendly objects and made a digital music box that plays a single song. I got really excited about the idea of building a minimalist enclosure out of a single piece of wood, somewhat similar to this box made by GRADO.
After getting a (heavy!!) piece of white pine from M Lumber and doing a quick cardboard prototype for the box proportions, I used the band saw in order to cut the piece to my dimensions. Ben showed us in class a series of wood enclosures, and recommended cutting a piece in two parts, along its height, drilling space for the electronics in one side, and the other one as a cover. However, I failed to cut the wood along its height, and after trying five times gave up.
I ended up deciding to use the entire piece of wood for the enclosure, and cover up the hole using a piece of white acrylic. Let the drilling start.
Making sure everything is the right depth and drilling all the holes somewhat uniformly took a way longer time than expected. The next step involved trying out the placement of the controls on the box, and expanding the negative space close to the edges, to make installing the panel mount potentiometer and 3.5mm jack possible.
In order to get the controls to fit, I spent A LOT of time with the Dremel.
By this point, the box was functional—and music was coming out of it! If you are curious, the song played is Seventeen by Sharon van Etten.
However, the power jack was still not mounted, as you can see in the second photo below.
The last steps involved closing the bottom of the box—using a laser cut white acrylic sheet, attaching the 12V power jack and applying a polyurethane finish to the wood. And, of course, rubber feet.
