As second-semester Duncan seniors, we (Hoang and Sarah) wanted to use this project to honor the last four years of fond memories as Duncaroos. We decided to make our pawns suns, as a tribute to the patron deity of Duncan College, the Sungod.

It was pretty chill, fun and games for a while. We chose a basic pawn to work off of (link) and added a crown of sun rays (link) around the head. This was a pretty straightforward task, streamlined by our unbeatable Fusion360 skills that we learned in ENGI 355 two years ago. 

After the freeze week threw everyone off-kilter a bit, we were back on the grind, trying to figure out how to set up our part for machining. The 3D printing went off without a hitch, but when it came to the CNC part, we had a *bit* more trouble (engineering themed puns!!!). Our sun rays were very finely detailed, and would require a small bit for precision. On Dr. Wettergreen’s recommendation, we scaled our model up on the X and Y axes so we could use a bigger bit without losing detail, and significantly reduce the overall time our cut would take. 

After quite a few days of finagling with the software-related minutiae of Fusion360 and Easel, we moved onto more hardware-related problems. First, our dimensions were off for the stock wood we chose to machine, resulting in some machining issues. The next piece of plywood we chose had an invisible knot, which resulted in an incomplete job.

Fast forward a couple of tries later, each try bringing us to the next level of CAM proficiency, we finally managed to have a decent mold to work with.

Some liquid rubber mixing, pouring, and leaking later, we now have 2 separate negative molds for mass production of our chess pieces.

Using the other set of liquid rubbers with a much faster cure time and some dyes, we speedily produced these beautiful sungod-themed pieces, just in time for the 2nd dose of the COVID-19 vaccines which knocked us out right before the deadline.