Laser Cut Food Truck School Project
For my English 10 Honors final assignment, we were tasked with building a food truck for a project. I had recently gotten a laser cutter attachment for my printer, and decided that there would be no better time than now to test it out. I put a decent amount of time into the project, but I’m quite happy with how it turned out!
After Initially finishing the frame, I still thought that the truck looked a little too sad and empty, so I modeled and built a small interior for it. The kitchen design makes no sense from a real life perspective, but I still think that it’s pretty cute. On the night before it was due, I decided to print some small pots and cans, as well as some other furniture to adorn the insides. Overall, It was really fun and satisfying to model the entire interior.
Building Process
To create the general 3d Shape of the food truck, I found some general references online, and then quickly modeled the body using Blender. Afterwards, to make it laser cuttable, I used the tool Pepakura designer. It’s typically used for creating papercraft, but its ability to unfold 3d meshes and edit the faces was extremely useful for laser cutting.
After cutting the pieces, I assembled them together with super glue. The wheels and jack point were 3d printed, and also glued on. For the windows, I used a transparent binder divider, and cut it to a smaller shape to fit.
Adding lights
To add lights, the first thing I did was to drill rows of holes on either side of the roof. Afterwards, I placed individual LED’s into each hole, securing them with hot glue.
Afterwards, It was a simple matter of wiring them all in parallel. I was lazy, so I just added a single resistor between all the LED’s and ground, calculating the needed current foAfterwards, It was a simple matter of wiring them all in parallel. I was lazy, so I just added a single resistor between all the LED’s and ground, calculating the needed current for each LED. The wires are a mess for sure, but they stay pretty hidden in the roof thankfully. I chose warm yellow for the exterior lights, and cooler white for the interior.
The effect turned out really nice, especially the contrast between the interior and outside. In the end, I ended up painting the food truck, and creating a diorama for it, though I never took any pictures of that :[. Below is a picture of the poster board setup my group made, for the book Lord of the Flies. This food truck wasn’t the only fun thing, as we also cooked burgers and made a trifold.
