By: Jackson MatthewPosted on
Geometric coffee table

Honestly, I think a great meal isn’t just about great food, you need a great experience. With this in mind, I designed this geometric coffee table for my home!

How did i design it?

I worked with Sketchup to come up with a “wire” table that i liked. My creative process was mainly drawing random geometric shapes and later connecting them. I played around with 4 or 5 five designs until i found one that i liked.

I prototyped the geometric coffee table using straws and tape.

Once I could “feel” I was “right”. I went all in. Using Openscad I modeled some straw-joints.  And build again several prototypes.

I used Openscad because its fairly easy to modify dimensions, just in case I wanted to do some last minute changes (that I did ). You can download the files from Thingiverse.

Once I had a small prototype that i was happy with, I tried to find the right material to connect the joints. I was going for aluminum rods, but even if it would have been really cool, material cost was pretty high.  So instead, I chose carbon fiber rods (8mm).

To glue the joints I wanted to avoid epoxy. So I wrongly chose silicone, after this stupid choice I switched to an special glue for plastics. And this one so far seems to hold everything properly.

And after a couple of glue jam sessions….  I ordered a shapy glass! Now my digital pancakes are gonna look suuuuuuper with my new geometric coffee table! I hope you enjoy!

So just in case any of you want to build one here some more details:

Dimensions:

  • Height: 42cm
  • Width: 54cm
  • Depth: 61cm

Materials:

  • Joints:
    • 6 x MesaTop (Top corner joint)
    • 6 x MesaPata (Leg joint)
    • Crossed joints
      • 6 x Horizontal crossed
      • 12 x Vertical crossed
  • Rods
    • Joints two MesaTop  x6.  ~ 275mm
    • Joints MesaTop and MesaPata x6.  ~ 380mm
    • Joints MesaTop and Vertical crossed x12. ~ 205mm
    • Joints Vertical crossed and MesaPata x12. ~ 168mm
    • Joints Vertical crossed and Horizontal crossed x24. ~ 87mm
  • Glue
  • Glass

If you try to build your own, please double check the rods length, because i had some problems, so i DO NOT guarantee those measures are perfect, I totally recommend to redo the whole process, from sketchup and calculate your dimensions.

Also openscad files aren’t the cleanest ones, but i hope its an start if you try to make your own geometric coffee table!

And be sure to choose a proper glue, otherwise you will have to reglue several times (as I had to). Maybe I should had use epoxy… maybe for the next one.