Furniture Laser Cutting

V6 Engine-Block Coffee Table

Dmitry (we share the workshop) always wanted an engine block coffee table. After buying a second-hand rusty Ford V6 engine block, he sent it off to sand-blasting, then powder coated it red. He also had some VW Scirocco pistons and connecting rods and those were powder coated black.

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The connecting rods and their screws were epoxied into the engine block. Not having a welder is a pain. He also had the idea of somehow attaching a fan he had laying around so that it would look more like a functional engine. A “couple” of tries later, and I had a laser cut bearing mount for the fan.

Here’s a GIF of it in action:

fan_spinning

The next feature on the list was some interesting lighting. Luckily we found a cheap remote LED controller with a lot of patterns and brightness settings. It’s the small shrink tubed thing in the upper part of the picture on the left. We used a really small 12V power supply from the LED section in the hardware store.

To get a nice glowing effect from the cylinders I laser cut some MDF discs to fit inside, and glued some LED strip to them. Then glued some spacers to the MDF and over those I placed (not glued, so removable) white acrylic to disperse the light.


And here’s a GIF of the lighting in action:

leds

And some more pictures in its final position: