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Laser Cut Ferris Wheel

A laser-cut ferris wheel designed in Fusion 360 that moves!

Laser Cut Ferris Wheel

I built this working Ferris Wheel as my week two assignment for How to Make Almost Anything (HTMAA) (6.9020). My objective was to learn about parametric design, living hinges, and wooden joints. All the pieces were designed first in Fusion 360 before being laser cut and assembled. No glue is used anywhere.

Designing the Ferris Wheel

I split my design into two parts:

  1. The Ferris Wheel itself
  2. The base

For the base I wanted to visualize how the sides would bend so I used the Sheet Metal tool in Fusion 360. This allowed me to fit together while bent, but export as a flatten DXF file for laser cutting in the end. I used a reference image for my living hinges and rectangular pattenered it on the sides of the base.

Extruded Sheet Metal BaseExtruded Sheet Metal Base

For the Ferris Wheel, I designed everything in sketches and extruded them. All the pieces have finger joints and I used the Joint tool to make sure everything fitted together in the end.

Laser cutting the parts

To actually laser cut the parts I needed to account for kerf. Thankfully there is a Fusion360 plugin, DXF For Laser, which can create .dxf files from your bodies faces and offsets the dimensions to account for kerf.

I exported all my bodies as .dxf files, made some test cuts, and then cut all of them out.

It took a few tries to get the kerf right, but in the end, and with the help of a pallet, everything fitted together.

Laser cutting the partsLaser cutting the parts
Assembled Ferris WheelAssembled Ferris Wheel