This was a long project, the brief was for a table that could be used as both a dining table and a work table, at a standing height.

In addition I wanted to keep the table looking as simple and purposeful as possible in both positions. To experiment with geometry I used Grasshopper in Rhino 3D to quickly iterate and generate a mechanism with a minimum of moving parts.The ability to dynamically play with systems in grasshopper is fantastic for quickly tweaking a design. On top of that it’s nice to be able to make pretty convincing renders in Rhino to get an idea of the final look.

I used birch ply for the majority of the table to keep things easy to cut on the CnC machine. I wasn’t completely without issue however as there can be a surprising amount of tension in thick plywood, I was using 18mm and setting some of the cut pieces aside for a few days was enough for them to deform, so most of the parts had to be reshaped by hand in the end anyway.The top was made from HiMacs Natural Acrylic Stone which is a sheet product made from reclaimed mining waste bonded together. Its solid and resilient enough to use in place of stone surfaces in most instances, but soft enough to be cut and shaped with ordinary TCT blades and bits.

I used a rail saw to rough cut the sheet to size and after laminating to the ply top, trimmed it to size with my 1/2″ router. The biggest problem was the inability of my shop vac to suck up the statically charged shavings. Having a more or less flat massively overbuilt workbench was a great help, I used almost the entire thing as a clamping surface, using subtly curved sections of CLS across the ply to create more or less even pressure while only clamping the edges.

The table is 120cm long, 50cm deep and can be set up either 70cm high or 90cm high.