Escape Key Project - D - Desk Bracket

This week's mission on the Escape Key Project was D, which I'd categorised as desk bracket.  I very quickly realised that the desk I work at has quite unusual angles on it, so I couldn't put in the bracket that I was hoping for!

I went on this little rabbit hole of brackets and went towards ornate shelf brackets. These are cast iron metal—dark, gritty, urban, and quite industrial-looking brackets. Perhaps I could have made more swirls in mine, but I'm very pleased with how it came out.

I designed a bracket in Shapr3D that said NOT D, and then I flipped that around so that you could look at the bracket from either side and it would say NOT D either way—which I felt was quite clever, because sometimes you can see something and it doesn’t work the way that you want it to.

 I’m using Shapr3D to try and improve my design skills. It’s not one that I’m used to—it’s got a steep learning curve—so this project is really helping me get to grips with the tooling and trying to fulfil a mission. It’s quite good in that it snaps to grid, and it’s quite effective in that way, and it also worked really well in terms of adapting the bracket as I wanted it to. It was certainly more effective in a way that Tinkercad perhaps wouldn’t have been, and wouldn’t have been as accurate.

I used the laser cutter to cut the flat edges, and the reason for that is that if I’d printed them, not only would they have needed supports, which would have taken longer, but it also would have taken far longer and cost more to 3D print these than to cut them.

I made the main part of the bracket three millimetres thick, because my black MDF that I love using on the laser is also three millimetres thick. It took just over a minute to cut the four brackets—those plates that I was talking about earlier—and the actual letter brackets themselves cost 18 pence in total to make and just over half an hour to print. So not too bad at all in terms of cost—this is perhaps one of the cheapest elements of the escape room puzzles.

Were I to carry this on and refine it further, I would possibly make them larger. I would certainly make them more ornate, because they’re quite blocky at the moment, although that does fit in with the vibe of the 70s computer geeky atmosphere that I’m trying to create. I might also pull out the paints and see if I can make them look a little bit more industrial, a bit more metal. I could have perhaps sprayed them or coated them, or even given that rusted look. For the moment, I’m quite happy with how they are.

You can see from the top image that I’m really pleased with the finished product. In fact, I’ve made a little shelf using some scrap wood and some varnish, and this little shelf is sitting there quite happily in my office on my wall—and it blends in incredibly well.

I’m now looking forward to visitors coming in and them catching their eye and seeing what it is and wondering what it’s about.

As ever, I’d love to hear your feedback, your thoughts and views. Let me know in the comments what you think of this project—how you would change and refine it.