One pillar with a laser level looked awful. The jig found true center on its own, and the other 160 meters took an afternoon.
About the project
I did one pillar with a laser level and it looked awful. The columns at Temple San Francisco were encased in OSB that came out wavy, so a laser gave me a straight line on a surface that was not straight, and any drift in the vertical LED track was going to mirror across ten pillars in a room full of them. I needed the extrusion to find true center on its own.
I built a four-part 3D printed sled, broken into pieces to beat my printer's build plate. The first prints refused to fit inside the aluminum channel. Once I dialed in the width, the interlocking joints held rigid. I rubbed a yellow china marker on the notched ends so I could reference the outer corner extrusions at any height without measuring.
In use, I slid the jig upward with one hand while I matched the ends to find center, and tacked the extrusion with a pneumatic nailer with the other. The 160 meters of track that had been a multi-day problem took a couple of hours. The wavy casing disappeared behind straight lines.
- FDM 3D Printing
- SolidWorks
- Custom Fabrication
- Rapid Prototyping
- Hand tools
- Assembly Design
Gallery
