ACRYLIC TESS AND ICON
These are small acrylic models of the TESS and ICON spacecraft that I designed and cut on my CNC machine. I fit the CNC with a 1.6mm wide bit and used it to cut through sheets of 3mm acrylic. All the pieces were designed with just enough tolerance so that everything could friction fit together. In some cases the fit was so tight a hammer was required to assemble the model.
The ICON model is the simpler of the two models. It is only comprised of 9 pieces and none of the pieces require anything more complicated than doing a simple 2-D routing of the acrylic. The TESS model is made up of 20 individual pieces and 6 of those pieces require a very slow and gradual ramp to form the conical shape you see in the pictures below. The two left pictures are of the ICON model and the two right pictures are of the TESS model.
The ICON model is the simpler of the two models. It is only comprised of 9 pieces and none of the pieces require anything more complicated than doing a simple 2-D routing of the acrylic. The TESS model is made up of 20 individual pieces and 6 of those pieces require a very slow and gradual ramp to form the conical shape you see in the pictures below. The two left pictures are of the ICON model and the two right pictures are of the TESS model.
