Assembling Slices

Together with Lisa, on Saturday I started assembling the MDF mannequin.

In total, it has 11 horizontal slices and 15 vertical slices.

The challenge Lisa and I found regards two main issues:

  • The MDF doesn't slide very easily, making it hard to assemble the slices
  • The radial structure of the waffle strucutre makes the sliding even harder due to the inability to exploit the perpendicularity between slices when using force

Since the slices were stuggling to slide in, we used a hammer with a rubber head to push them in. This is a bit dangerous since the MDF can break. Indeed a few slices of the neck did break :(

photo_collages.002.jpegOn Monday, we finished assembling my Mannequin.
Together with Oscar, we discussed how to solve the issue I encountered with Lisa on Saturday about the difficulty in sliding the MDF slices one into the other.
Our solution is the following: we sanded the interlocking slots just a bit in order to enlarge them, thus enabling easier sliding into each other.

asse_2.jpeg
The mannequin is fully assembled. A few pieces of the neck broke but we fixed them with glue afterwords and it looks great. Sanding the slots proved to be ideal, although the pieces still needed to be locked with the hammer.

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