So I was curious to see if I could create my very one dogbone joint in Sketchup. I figured it would be a good exercise in understanding how they work plus it gave me some much needed Sketchup practice.
I’m sure there are a few ways to achieve a dogbone in Sketchup so it would also be nice to hear how others are doing it.
Anyways this is how I did it.
- Draw a rectangle to your desired size. I am using 3/4" ply and wanted a 2" joint so I made my rectangle exactly 3/4" x 2". Also draw a circle with the same diameter as your router bit (typically 1/4").
- Next I took advantage of Sketchup’s snap to midpoint features. First draw a vertical line all the way through the circle from the top midpoint to the bottom midpoint. Second, draw a horizontal line from the midpoint of the first line to the outer edge of the circle. Third, draw a line from the same midpoint as before to the midpoint of the quarter circle arc.
- Using the move command, move the circle from the quarter circle arc midpoint to the corner of the rectangle.
- Next delete all lines except the outer lines.
- Repeat the above steps for all other corners.
- For visualization purposes, I then extruded the dogbone shape on a test rectangle and added a test slot piece as well.
- Following the instructions found here I converted the Sketchup model to .svg. I had to install both extensions listed in the comments to get this to work. I converted .svg to gcode using MakerCam. Instructions on how to do this are found here.
Hope someone will find these instructions useful! Here are the results.
I’m excited to try designing my first 3D object with Maslow using dogbones. I’ll upload the project when I’m done!
