Our friends Lenore and Windell of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, have cooked up a scale model of a 555 chip that works as a footstool.

We wanted a new footstool at the lab, and somehow came across the idea of making it in the shape of our hero above, the 555 timer chip.

We started our design by looking at the datasheets, and found a few good dimensional drawings that we could scale up. Our model is roughly 30 times actual size at 12 1/2″ long, compared to 0.4″ for a genuine 555 chip. More importantly, it’s a little over 8 1/2″ tall, which we determined to be a good height for a footstool.

The first stage of construction was to cut out a stack of 1/2″ thick plywood shapes on a CNC router. We used a strong and dense grade of hardwood plywood for this, since there are thin parts that need to be strong. There are 15 elongated hexagons, six with short legs, and four with long legs. Note that every shape has four alignment holes through it.

(The little black dot in the top pic is a real 555!)