Introduction:

I needed some fan guards for my arcade machine and for a neat little entertainment centre hack.

Playing around I made a fish-eye honey-comb screen that looked pretty good. The pattern has larger holes near the centre of the fan and smaller holes where it counts.

How to make your own (with plans):

Making this is pretty easy if you have a laser cutter. If you don’t grab the .dxf  file and head of to your local laser/acrylic cutting business or makerspace.

The .dxf file is downloadable here.
A printable .png (good for the template) is downloadable here.

Q: I’m too lazy, can you sell me one?

Not any more (sorry).

I originally designed this as a two shelf unit, but trivially built it as a three shelf unit. The indents in the shelf place McCormick brand spices (Australian jar) at a pleasing interval, and seat them snugly. The rail is at the right height to keep the label viable and support the jar, without making removal difficult.

Machining was done on the artifactory‘s  CNC-router.

Final Result

Blue Prints

Image (click for larger)

Download

DXF (cad file)  here

Construction Notes

NB: I could not quite let go of my old school woodworking tendencies, so I made all tabs fit the slots exactly… This meant that after the router made its cut, the wood would expand a little and not fit in the slot. This is just what I wanted, preferring a bit of sanding at the end, so all would fit very snug. Nowadays I would wind back the slots 0.3 of a millimetre and let the glue do the rest.

The spices escutcheons I ended up 3d – printing and painting.  Nowadays there are plenty of 3d printing services should could offer a much better finish.

The stain I used was Wattyl Wood Gel – Honey Oak. I like how easy and fool proof these stains are. The results not bad either.

Photos of actual parts.