When designing the meditation cube I made sure to account for the type of wood I would be using, the size of the light bulb, and the milling capabilities of the CNC machine. I decided that I wanted the walls of the cube to have a decent thickness so that the light would look more intricate reflecting off of the inside edges of the lotus design. This is why I went with 3/4 inch pine instead of something thinner which would have milled faster. For the overall dimensions of the cube I went with 6" x 6" faces. This is a good size enclosure to house the LED light bulb and easily fits into my CNC work area which had a maximum size of 8" x 8".

I used Fusion360 to design all of the wooden components. This software is great for quickly bringing your 3D designs to life. There are tons of instructional videos on youtube for Fusion360 which make learning the software a breeze.

In order to create the lotus design cut out of the sides of the cube there are a couple of steps involved. First I quickly sketched out the lotus design with a permanent marker. Next I took a photo of the sketch and opened the photo up in Inkscape. Inkscape is a great free vector graphics editor. You can quickly turn any image into a vector .svg file which is what Fusion360 requires. Just import your image and select path>trace bitmap. Save your new image as a .svg and import into Fusion 360. This is how I laid the Lotus design onto each side of the enclosure and cut it out of the design.

The design has a total of 8 individual components to be milled.

Lotus Cube Side x4

Lotus Cube Top x1

Lotus Cube Base x1

Socket Cover x1

Wired Wedge x1

In Fusion360 export each component as a .stl file in order to produce G-Code for your CNC Mill. I have uploaded all of the .stl files for you to download below. You don't have to use a CAD software to have a 3D view of the .stl files. Your computer should be able to open them up in a native 3D viewer so you can have a better idea of what each of the components entail. For example my MacBook just opens the files up in "preview" which comes free with apple computers.

I have also uploaded the entire Fusion360 design onto the cloud. If you click this link Lotus MC 3D you can have access to a nice 3D view of the meditation cube, as well as download the entire file if you want to make some of your own creative adjustments to the design.

Since the work area of the CNC mill I used is only 8"x8"x3" I milled each component using its own individual setup. If you have access to a larger CNC machine you could potentially mill all of the components in one setup, saving a lot of time.