Milestone Projects

Voxel Model

Castle

Hollow Form

Coat Hook

Paper Cut Vessel

 Laser Cut Object Production

    After our group settled on the idea of a pencil/pen/tool roll, that looks like a giant pencil when not in use, and went off and made our own concept sketches, we came back together and chose of elements of each persons design to use. From this we ended up with a roll that is held together by the sharpened end of the pen, and the eraser, both acting as caps to keep the rolled up center in place, with an additional drawer in the eraser end.

For production we decided to divide and conquer, in which Maddy modeled our design, which I then further refined to ensure proper tolerances, and flattened it. Upon flattening the model we realized that when unrolled, the circumference of a circle/hexagon becomes quite large, and Maddy and I worked together to "Tetris" the flattened pieces onto the paper so that it would fit inside the laser cutter working area. After the vessel was cut out, it was Nick's turn, who expertly assembled the vessel, which I am grateful for, as if I had assembled it, I can grantee it would end up covered in inky fingerprints.

            

Model

Flattened and Tetris-ed

Cut and assembled product

Laser Cut Object Collab

    

Laser Cut Object Collab

    For this project I am collaborating with Maddy and Nick, whose blogs can be found at https://thespacewatermelonsplanet.blogspot.com/ and https://nickobjectdesign.blogspot.com/ respectively. We brainstormed a series of ideas for objects and vessels for them, eventually settling of a pencil(s). Other objects included: candles, jewelry, a jar of honey. However none of those ideas saw fruition. The initial concept for the vessel to contain the pencil(s) was a pencil roll that looks like a pencil, and then from there many more ideas that could be added on to this concept were generated, and feature creep began to loom. Thankfully we avoided falling into that rabbit hole, and the only addition feature that ended up being added was a secondary drawer, stemming from one of my concepts for how this "mega pencil" would open up. 

 Coat Hook: Production

      Even further refinement has been done to  my coat hook concept, as I became aware that it would not work upon learning the dimensions of the provided mounting hardware (screws), as I had designed it thinking that the screws would be longer. Because of this I changed my mounting solution, choosing to opt for screw keyholes. This was probably for the best regardless, as my previous mechanism was much more complicated, leading to there being more things to go wrong, and reduced strength.

 

The new mounting system (An image which totally disrupts the timeline of the process photos that are lower down in the post, oops)

 

 

 Furthermore I realized that my design would be much too small once printed, to remedy this I halved the height, and reduced the design down to a single track for coat hooks, instead of two. 

Process

    I began the production model by creating a bounding box of 100mm x 100mm x 100mm, which is the size guideline for this assignment, and then I created curves which I would extrude to create the basic object

    From there I lofted and extruded curves to create cutting shapes, in order to make the channels that the coat hooks would slide in. I also created copies of these shapes which will be used later.

    One will notice the differently shaped top "track," the though process for this was to eliminate the overhang that would require additional supports, as I wanted to keep the track as smooth as possible for the sliding components. However I failed to remember that I would be printing the coat hook in a different orientation for additional strength, to avoid layers shearing. (See print simulation/ Prusa slic3r images) However I still left this in, thinking it would at least serve as a "key" to ensure that the moving hooks are inserted in the proper orientation.

    And so the mystery is revealed! The copies of the cutting objects were used to make the hooks, to ensure that they had the same shape as the track, although slightly scaled down to ensure that there was enough clearance to allowed sliding. Additionally I improved upon my original design for the actual hook component by adding a rounded end, to reduce the amount of pressure put in one spot of the coat, to make it less likely to damage fragile materials. This also serves to prevent me from impaling myself when I accidentally walk into it, as I inevitably will.

Here one can see the punch I designed to create the screw keyhole. However a pre-made, and already tested  one was later provided, which I then used to replace the key hole that I had made, as I knew it would work properly and I was unable to prototype mine. 

  

Final Renders

 For some reason Rhino was refusing to use my GPU to render these, which I suspect is an issue related to the recent update it received. In reality this didn't make much of a difference to image quality, but it was definitely a lot slower, surprisingly so. 

Prusa Slic3r

    The sliced model has relatively few supports, which I am very happy about, as I aim to create as little waste as possible, when at all possible.

A Brief Reflection

 

        Overall the modeling process for this assignment went fairly smoothly, with the only real issues that I encountered being a result of not being giving mounting hardware dimensions and size guidelines before I started creating my design. However, although I believe that I have done a good job executing my design, I feel like it lacks personality, and perhaps I focused too much on adhering to  very industrial design principles. In future projects I would like to improve upon the aesthetic design of my creations, so that they are more appealing from an emotional standpoint, instead of a purely logical one.