Laser Cut Buildings

I've always has trouble with making buildings for wargames.  The problem is in the windows.  Drills make round holes in wood and mortising tools are not nearly as good as they promise in their ads.  I made a full Russian Tank factory once and had no trouble with the factory but the office windows were a debacle.  Drill, saw, drill, saw, saw, saw, drill -- took forever.

To get around the window problem, I tried cutting out a building wall from a piece of MDF but found that my tablesaw cut straight but couldn't cut square especially for small pieces.  Not a good tool for making miniature terrain.

After seeing all the recent startups using lasers to make buildings, I looked around and found one for rent.  First step was to design a throw-away building I call Building 0.  I have no intention of making any/many of these but it's here to build some skills around the drawing program and make the mistakes around fabricating.  Here's a cut-out of the roof of Building 0 and a staircase.

 

Once cut with lasers, the walls come out like this: 

 

It's a very simple setup -- 6"x6" building with 3" floors.  Here's what it looks like with just the base plus the roof section.  (I will apologize right now for some truly lousy photography)

The roof has a balcony around the top with cutouts to allow for walkways to be added.  I also made a middle floor that I can copy to be floor 2, 3, 4, etc.

I learned several things with this building. First and foremost -- the engraving I did on the outside of the building takes a LONG time to print. Plain old cuts take much less time. Granted they're less interesting but for quantity, I need to lose the engraving.  Also, the joinery I used presumed the MDF was uniformly 1/8" but I found it's a few fractions of a millimeter smaller in most cases.  The holes I cut for holding things together (mortices) need to get a little thinner.

Here's the simple building with a staircase going up the side to the second floor. 

After putting it in play, I found that my proportions were off. It looks good but the rise needs to be steeper and the stairs need to end higher.

 

I also built a 6" walk way to go between buildings.  I don't have a building for it to go to -- so it's just propped up against a middle floor for Building 0. 



The walkway's a little off in the ratios too -- the railing is too low and the walkway isn't very interesting overall. Needs some cutouts or a railing.

 

Here's what the building looks like with the base, the middle floor and the roof.

The next step is to print a few more middle floors and paint it up.  Look for another post in about a week.