Hey everyone!!

We are thrilled to share with you all the final result of this incredible journey: the realization of “The ColombIta” box. I chose this name together with my partner in crime for this project (Giorgia Zoaldi) to celebrate the diversity and the power of sharing cultures (our painting choices represent the flags of our countries). From this:

Colomb= Colombian culture

Ita= Italian culture

• Designing and Shaping

The first step has been planning and designing our idea about the box design. After that, we carefully shaped our wood pieces and in the meanwhile, we realized that some of them weren’t perfectly cut as they should have been (we agreed that it can happen and we were glad to have received all the others already cut). Therefore, for this first troubleshooting, we proceeded cutting them from scratch.

To shape all the pieces we proceeded routing all the edges and the short sides of the wood pieces that were uneven. Then, we used the orbital sander with grit sizes 60, 120 and 200, sequentially, to smoothen all our pieces. In this way, we could obtain a very nice and defined wood texture.

• Wood staining: the most fun part (and the most tiring)

 At this point, since we decided to use plenty of colors because of our flags (6 colors), we decided to proceed with the painting step before assembling the crate parts together. In this way, we avoided to unintentionally stain the other pieces with different colors. It took us a while, we gave a total of 2 colored hands:

We colored our wood pieces with spray paint, in the following order:

• Italian flag: green, white and red
• Colombian flag: yellow, blue and red

For the remaining short sides of the box, we applied the walnut wood stain to obtain a simple finish. In the end, to get a more defined touch, we applied a final hand of spray gloss stain. After 4 hours or so of painting, we left all the pieces drying on the drying rack. When we came back, unfortunately we found some pieces placed on top of each other, and consequently stuck together. We were very sad about this, since we spent several hours trying to obtain the uniform colors we wanted. But as Dr. Wettergreen says, we were “frustrated but not discouraged” :/ .For this second troubleshooting, we decided to sand the damaged part and to stain again! Once we made sure everything looked perfect in terms of color uniformity, we moved to the next step: the assembly. 

 

• Crate assembly 

Neither of us had a lot of experience with drilling holes and working with wood in general, so we can say it was fun and interesting at the same time. We used the red edge clamps that were made available to us to ensure we always had a perfect 90-degree angle before drilling through the plates and screwing them together. We then used drill bits. We used a larger drill bit (⅛” drill bit) and a smaller one to create a pilot and normal hole, ending up with counter sink holes, as pictured below. 

 

After doing this for all the pieces we screwed all the screws in and made sure all the crate segments were stable. Everything was too good to be true… So, we first built the first bottom part of the box (the 2 longer pieces + the short pieces), to then realize we completely messed up. Third troubleshooting: instead of attaching the shorter pieces to the ends of each long piece, we attached the long pieces’ edges to the short pieces. So of course all the dimensions were off and we panicked. We instantly looked for Madison (as she was the TA in the OEDK that day and time), and she confirmed to us that we could not leave our dimensions like that, as it would be the only crate different from the rest. Having said this, we proceeded to take out all the screws and made some “fixing paste” with wood glue and sawdust. We took the fixing paste and filled all the visible holes and let them dry. Additionally, we started the whole assembly process from scratch, this time making sure we were following the correct steps (the short pieces screwed onto the long pieces). We first re-made the bottom frame, then we added the vertical supports to it and secured them with screws. After doing so, we added the middle and top planks, making sure the gap between them was evenly spaced. 

 

• Addition of cords (handles)

We wanted to add handles to our box so we could easily carry it around if needed. To do so, we chose to take some of the purple cord that was available in the cors box at the OEDK. We first created two big holes in the right and left sides of the top plank of our crate respectively. We then cut two segments of the purple cord to our desired length and added duct tape to the both ends of each segment to prevent the ends to start unraveling. Finally, we introduced the cords through the holes we made and secured them with each other with duct tape as well, as pictured below. 

• Laser cutting of our personalized plates

For the final step, we proceeded to laser cut our name plates and screw them to the box so that our classmates, TAs, and professor could recognize our box. 

• The art of “mis en place”

Throughout our making process, we were carefully paying attention to our work space. To this purpose, we always cleaned up all the surfaces we worked on with the provided vacuums and all the instruments we used were placed back in their appropriate places. 

COST ANALYSIS 

Cost Type	Cost	Price	Source	Quantity	Total
Materials	1×4 Board	$10.99 /yd	Joann.com	3 yds	$33.97
	Screws	$4.97	Walmart	Box of 50	$4.97
	Sand Paper (60, 120, 200)	~$1.66 each	Harbor Freight Tools	4 of each	~ $20
	Wood Stain and Spray Paint	Walnut stain ($7.98) 5 spray paint colors ($5.98*5= 29.9$)	Home Depot	1 can and 5 spray paint cans	$37.88
Labor	Woodworking Operator	$20.82/h Total of 4	ziprecruiter.com	2 woodworking operators	$166.56
	Prototyping Engineer (You!)	$36/h Total of 1h	ziprecruiter.com	2 prototyping engineers	$72
Overhead	Facility Cost (Machine Time)	$50/month	TXRX lab	N/A	$50
	Quality Control	$20	ziprecruiter.com	1	$20
Design	Engineering and Development	$14/hour	ziprecruiter.com	1 hour	$14
	Iterations	$20/troubleshooting	Reddit.com	3 troubleshootings	$60
Misc.	Waste and Scrap	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
GRAND TOTAL					$479.38