Throughout the project i was faced with challenges relating to both design and also machenery. I had to make my merchandise on the 3d printer which was fine as the printer itself can create very complex shapes however in making my sculpture I had to use the laser cutter. This then presented me with a problem As my sculpture linked together from three separate pieces.
first of all I started off with completely different intial ideas. After some evaluation of the products I decided that none of them had any real meaning or purpose and were just general messages that weren't specific to any clients. From this I decided to choose my client first and then come up with some designs.
my client was the awesome walls Rock climbing centre in Liverpool, this meant I needed something relating to climbing but also still kept to the criteria of the brief. and as my final outcome I believe that I have kept to the brief all the while promoting the climbing centre at the same time, Making me think that my product was very successful by the end of the project. However there were some things I can do better.
To start with in my opinion the main Areas of improvement were in the manufactoring side of the process rather than the design or cad cam. For example my 3D printing of my merchandise did not work as well as I would of hoped. This is due to a problem I made with the scaling, because of this the carabener was not only to small but you could also not see the logo I had designed on the locking mechanism. If I were to try this again I would definatley correct the issues I have had and maybe make a larger version. Secondly I had a similar problem with laser cutting process. When cutting the product I did not account for the laser cut width , this meant that again the locking mechanism was to small and therefore I could not put it in the final prototype. In order to correct this I will have to go back into rhino cad to play with the scaling of the locking mechanism to ammend it @ .
Overall however I believe that the project went okay and if more time was spent on perfecting the models of both the merchandise and the sculpture then the project will of gone very well. In then end the client was happy with the designs and I stuck to the briefs criteria wich is what is needed and required as a designer.
Tuesday, 17 December 2013
Evaluation of project
Monday, 16 December 2013
Preparing the merchandise
When my merchandise had dried i then took it into the ventilation box. using a brush i started to brush any excess powder from the model. this is so that the product can be coated in a strengthening liquid and can be coloured.
Revealing my merchandise
once the 3D printer had finished you have to leave it for 1 hour so the resin can dry. once it had finished i took my product out but this is all there was. through further investigation this was because i had made an error during the rhino cad process. I realised that the locking mechanism was not joined to the body.
however i rectified the problem and below is a photo of the 3D printer in action.
eventually the product was finished and ready for prepping.
3D Printer
To create my merchandise i had to use the 3D printer. In my earlier post i already had my merchandise sealed and ready to 3D print. firstly you need to make sure there is enough powder in the building bay, then flatten out the powder. the 3D printer then needs to do a few test runs to make sure both bays are flat and compact. once this is done you need to make some checks regarding the level of the resin and liquid bottles and also the powder bin. once this is completed you can then 3D print your product.
Using the laser cutter
First of all i stared by cutting my sheet or acrylic down to 90cm x 60 cm so the sheet could fit in the laser bed.
once i had done this it was time to import my file into a piece of software called laser system 5. this links directly with the laser cutter. you have to ensure that you have selected the right type of cut and also that you have selected the right setting for speed and power. this varies from different materials and different thicknesses. once everything was set up it was time to cut.
due to health and safety risks i had to stand with the laser cutter while it was working to make sure there were no fires and nothing went wrong during the process.
however once the laser had finished cutting i had a few problems. on the left is a picture of the locking mechanism. as you can see because it was so small the laser had cut it out but in the process made the peices far to small because the laser had melted most of the size.due to this i had to continue with out the locking mechanism and continue making anyway.
Logo
To make my product more unique and to relate more to the sculpture i have decided to emboss my logo onto the locking mechanism of the carabener shown below. not only does it relate to the sculpture but because of the location of the logo it also doubles up as arrows to shown the movement of the locking mechanism.
Logo
Above is my logo for this sculpture i have chose the colours shown because of two different reasons. firstly blue, red and purple because the climbing centre is based in Liverpool and blue and red are the two colours of Liverpool. the purple comes in because if you mix red and blue you get purple. secondly the blue red and yellow is because awesome walls colours are blue red and yellow this will further promote the rock climbing centre.
Presenting my sculpture
Below are some Photoshop pieces i have made outlining where i think the sculpture could fit into awesome walls.
Preparing my cad models for making
due to the brief there are certain ways that i can create my prototype models. for the sculpture i have to use the laser cutter and for the merchandise i have to use the 3D printer. because of this once the models are created i have to prepare them in a couple of ways so they can be ready for the machines.
3D Printing
to enable the 3D printer to read my product i have to make a few adjustments. to start with there can be no parts of your product inside another part so the model just has to be a 'skin' of what the product is. this means that the model has to just be the aesthetics of the product so it is just what it look like on the outside. to acheive this if you find any parts of your product you need to loose you split that part by the main body of the product and then delete the excess product. once all of that has been deleted you then use the showedges command this will highlight any un-joined edges. if any edges are not connect you then use the joinedge command. once you have completed this it is then time to turn your product to a mesh, this is so the 3d printer can understand what to print. from the drop down menus at the top select mesh and then mesh from NURBS object. a pop up box will then appear if you select few polygons this means that you final product will be very angular however if you select more polygons the shape of the product will smooth out like below.
once you have turn your surface model into mesh form you can then save the file but as a stereolithography file to enable the printer to read it.
laser cutting
due to the brief i have to create my sculpture model through the laser cutter. this involves splitting the cad models 6 mm apart. this is because the acrylic i will be using is 6 mm wide. to do this i firstly had to line all three caribeners up on one axis. i chose the z axis. i then drew lines 6 mm apart across the width of my the three caribeners. once i had done this i then had to split the lines by the models this made cross sections of my model which could then be imported into the laser cutting software as below.
once your model looks like this it is time to save. when saving the file format needs to be an auto cad drawing exchange file, or a dxf file. my models aren't complete caribener shapes, this is because once they have been cut i need to link them together and them glue them back into shape. i have chose to put the small cut in the middle to save material.
making my cad models
to start with i created the simple caribener shape that i wanted in a single line.
from there i used the tube tool from the solids menu to create the 3D shape. this saves a lot of time using the solid menu rather than creating a lot of circles and lofting through them to achieve the same outcome.
once i had created the 3D shape i then needed to make the hinge to connect it all together. i used the same tube tool and then draw a line and split both parts by it this then created the ideal pivot shape to keep the body locked into the hinge as you can also see in the image below. to connect the hinge to the body so it can pivot in a circular fashion i needed to created a Circe through both so a pin can keep them together this is shown below.
above is the pivoting pin to connect them together. this shape started off as another tube but a line split the cylinder by a circle i slightly offset from the body of the caribener. this makes the pin sit flush with body making the aesthetics of my product better.
once the main parts were made i decided to render my merchandise as you can see in the top right perspective veiw.
now was to create the extra security locking mechanism. to achieve this i created 5 circles and then used the loft tool to create the shape. to make this shape 3 dimensional i then lofted the end two circles to finish. the locking mechanism can now slide up and down to loch the hinge in place properly.
above is my sculpture. the making of this was exactly the same as the merchandise because the merchandise was a direct copy of one of the caribeners from the sculpture expect for the merchandise moves and works.
to finish of the models i then moved them into place using the rotate tool.
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