At the recommendation of Dr. Wettergreen, I began this assignment by cutting out cardboard to try to get a rough idea of how to fashion 3D objects from 2D slices without the hassle of having to spend time laser cutting. Although the layouts that I had set up for the pieces did not generally end up being the final layouts that I used in my project, this process did provide a good visualization aid.
My next step involved remaking my the Adobe Illustrator files that I had created for the 2D Illustrator drawing project. As I mentioned in my blog for that project, “most of the time, however I was guessing at the sizes [of shapes].” There were other slight issues from overlapping of lines and disconnected paths that were not visible to the naked eye when zoomed out, but would definitely be visible to a laser cutter.
I went about remaking the files. This time, I was less concerned about being exactly consistent with the book’s drawing than making sure that all the parts were symmetrical where required and that I knew the dimensions exactly. This process took a long time, but by doing this part early instead of trying to make my original files work, I believe that I saved time in the long run.
With the files repaired, the next step was laser cutting out the parts. There was one part in particular that I wanted to test, the most complex part with the largest amount of assembly required. I had come up with this design from the cardboard assembly process and wanted to make sure that it worked. The attempt with this design was to stay as true to the original part as possible. I would have a center piece an 4.5 inches long and one inch deep with (almost) semicircles stacked together on top and on bottom to create the illusion of a circular piece.
After cutting, I almost immediately ran into a problem. Because I was cutting my parts out of what people referred to as ¼” plywood, I decided that I needed four semicircles on top and on bottom to fill up the inch of space. When I printed the piece out, I saw that there was still a lot of space that needed to be filled. Even after printing another semicircle for the top and bottom, there was still some empty space. I realized to my surprise that wood is not always the advertised thickness. I would have to measure the thickness of the wood and adjust my design accordingly to account for the differences.
To avoid having to deal with different thicknesses of wood, I scrapped my original design for this part and instead decided to stack multiple copies of the base on top of one another. The next step involved making a low/medium fidelity prototype out of cardboard. This prototype worked rather well except for one kink. I had to rotate the hole in my top piece by 45°. Other than that, this prototype was promising.
The most difficult part of the project turned out to be the assembly however. The combination of my making mistakes and the little kinks added up to a lot of time. The biggest mistake that I made was in misaligning parts as I glued them. This problem was especially acute with the base and the top. Despite my best efforts, the pieces were slightly off, leading to a slight angle in the holes for the dowels. These angles, combined with slightly warped dowels, led to the contraption being at an angle that prevented it from working. Eventually, I learned my lesson and assembled the interior first before arranging the top and bottom in such a way that everything worked smoothly. Only then did I glue the base and top on, and even then, I had the layers set while attached to the machine so as to ensure that everything worked as it did before I glued everything together.
The other kinks that I had to iron out resulted mainly from the size of pieces—usually dowels—that were required to fit inside other pieces. These kinks hadn’t shown up in the cardboard prototype because the cardboard gave when necessary, but wood was not so forgiving. I ended up having to modify the files and recut pieces to get everything to fit smoothly, which ate up a lot of time.
During the course of this project, I improved my skills with Adobe Illustrator, mastered the 2D aspects of the laser cutter, and became somewhat comfortable with the drill press and belt sander. I did a bit of post processing work, as well. This post processing was different than that of our previous project because we were working with wood, not metal. I think my biggest knowledge gains, came in the assembly process. All told, I guess that I sunk at least 20 – 25 hours into this project, but I could make a second one in much less time. I think I’ve figured out most of the “rookie mistakes,” so to speak.
I learned a lot from this project. Plus, I now have a fun—if somewhat annoyingly loud—desk toy.
