After seeing a great woodworking James Webb Space Telescope model on Reddit I wanted to make something similar myself. I don't have a CNC machine but I do have a 3d printer. I ordered some hexagonal mirrors from Amazon (they seems to be sold out currently) and made a proof of concept STL with Tinkercad. That worked so I made a customizable OpenSCAD file so it will work with different sized mirrors as well.
The STLs I've included are for the above mentioned mirrors. They're created using 128mm, even though they measured 125mm. You need a little extra to fit the mirrors. Play around with it before you print all files.
I bought some 1/8 inch hardboard panel (2ft wide is enough for these mirrors) and traced the outline on it. Then transferred the line a bit inwards, see photo. I used a jig saw to cut it and a glue gun to glue all the parts on the hardboard.
You need to print 6 of every STL except for the center one without a hole.
It took me about 15 hours of printing, about $17 of filament and a few hours to put it together.
Have fun and please upload a make if you build one!
| jwst-128mm-2-shields-x6.stl | 3.6KB | |
| jwst-128mm-3-shields-x6.stl | 4.0KB | |
| jwst-128mm-no-hole-x1.stl | 2.2KB | |
| jwst-128mm-no-shield-x6.stl | 3.6KB | |
| jwst.scad | 962.0B |
