October 2009 Archives

Hey hey hey Fabulous Folk! Welcome to the virtual expose of my fourth Fab Academy assignment.



For assignment #4 we were asked to create a press fit construction kit. My form and function goal was a basic set of pieces that would allow freeform construction of almost any shape.

Check it out :)

A Series of un-Unfortunate Events

I tested my initial idea in matteboard and found the combination of strength and flexibility well suited for my project. I wanted to play around with thin plastics but ruled out acrylic because it's too brittle. There were a couple scrap pieces of this white bendy plastic lying around the lab so I thought I'd try it. It worked like a charm. :) Upon further investigation I learned it's called Delrin. Delrin is an industrial strength plastic thats easy to lasercut and is used for stamps.

I originally created my design for a .05" thickness material. The Delrin sheet I had is .06" thick so it fit very well. Also we had some bugs in the laser cutter settings so it perforated the entire design instead of cutting it through. This actually turned out really well in the end because when I finally got it cut, the perforations acted as little "teeth" making the joints that much stronger.

I made a bit of a tradeoff in my design between ease of assembly and structural integrity. I intentionally offset the slots from the center so as not to compromise the center of the reed pieces which seems to already be a natural stress point. I'd like to do a little bit more research to see if this tradeoff is actually necessary.

GIK city invaded by Metabrick monster.

There wasn't a script to fetch the dependencies required by cad.py under ubuntu, so here's one: fetchdeps.sh And there wasn't an SVG of GIK, so I ran it through trace bitmap: gik.svg

Row row, fight da powa.
These were tinted red with a Bic permanent marker.
kaminaglasses.svg

Art of Illusion is messy, here's how to make a window frame. window.stl

ganked mostly from this tutorial

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

A bunch of thin strips, 1pt or so apart, vp=5 vf=700 vs=100, make a sort of crude set of sunglasses.

This is 3D model of box I made in Art of Illusion, my semester project is a hydration bag, like the kind you find on lifeboats, that works via osmotic desalination. It's currently an extremely crude rough-draft type thing, but I think it gives a general idea of shape. The filter will have 30nm holes and be made of teflon. box.stl

SketchUp models of my robot arm...

Pinball machines need a lot of coils. I realized that my first step in creating a pinball machine would be to build a tool to wind accurate coils. The pinball machine hobbyist scene is pretty well organized, so I quickly found this chart at pinballmedic.net detailing the various coil winding schemes that I will need:

Coil chart at pinballmedic.net

I've begun a little later than everyone else, and I think I have less experience with most things electronic. Fortunately, I'm eager to learn and I can usually pick things up quickly.

My current plan for a semester project is to make a very detailed diorama, employing motors, sensors, cutting techniques, and other approaches to familiarize myself with what is possible, and to build facility with my new skills.

I have a strong background in traditional crafts (glass, textiles, metals, clay. . .) and I make dolls and puppets. I flamework glass eyes and glass teeth, sculpt the faces and bodies in polymer clay (often sculpting with sewing needles because they are so tiny!) I make the wigs, sew the clothes (I spun flax into yarn and knit the dress pictured above.) I love the idea of integrating my customary practices with new ways of working and thinking. How exciting!