Model Makery Redux

So, after my talk with Patrick on Monday, I was much dismayed to find out that I was going to have to re-do my entire model. I won't lie, it was a huge kick in the teeth, and I was bitter, but I'm better now. Now my substrate model is pretty much half done, which is a lot better than I can say for my previous one, so I guess things are going OK.

The first thing I had to deal with in this new model was how to connect my walls together without glueing them together. I thought I had achieved this with a small connection I had cooked up. This is the connection with a slight modification on it. Basically, the piece on the left goes through the first sheet, then through the second, leacing a small hook on the end, like this:That hook would then be fastened by the piece on the right hand side, like this:
The problem was that this didn't quite work because the tolerances of the MDF are just slightly off. If it was truly 1/8th of an inch, the friction between the outside (bottom) of this piece and the front piece would have been enough to fasten the outside piece into place, but since it was loose, the outside pieces could quite easily fall off, and that was a problem.

It was easily fixed with a small piece of black card paper which you can see fastened to the bottom of that top piece. With those pieces worked out, the rest of the model started coming together really quickly, and it's already looking pretty good.
This is how it's looking right now, which I'm actually pretty happy with, considering I had to re-do the whole joint system in a day. I laser cut again on Monday, which means the whole thing will be together, and then I can start getting the pods cut out and put on, and then I can start creating all the wacky connections and interactions between them, which is when the real fun will begin.