STC Design

Tuesday 12 June 2018

Reflection

As an industrial design student, the bowl was an eye opening and mind expanding exercise which proved to be an excellent test of skill. Looking back on the assignment there were areas which proved to be challenging, mainly, to do with the amount of patience required to ensure a quality finish.

If I were to redo this exercise I would take more care in the initial cutting out of the circle, the bowl’s initial form, from the aluminum. Trimming the aluminum to meet perfectly on the line will aid at the end of the assignment when you need to get a clean, flat and level edge. Sanding the edge of the bowl from being rough and uneven to smooth and level proved difficult. It was hard to grip the bowl properly when sanding, also an extremely time-consuming process.

One technique that I learned from doing this bowl assignment has to do with smoothing out the ‘puckering’ created when hammering the center of the circle. In the initial stages of the exercise, it is more effective to line up the radius of the bowl to the radius of the stump so that it is flush against the wood of the stump. This helps with shape retention while hammering the ‘pucker’ out flat, as the hammering can flatten out the bowl’s dome shape, but holding it the correct angle will help with reducing that flattening effect.

Considering my degree, this assignment and the entire course has been very helpful to expand my own manufacturing and design knowledge. Metal beating, as well as the form of exploration, expanded the way I can come up with product solutions.

Specific skilled learned is the way to use tools like hammers, sandbags, saddles, anvils, French rolling wheel and stumps to work a flat sheet of metal into a shape of my choosing. Whilst a somewhat crude finish, with more practice and time I can produce a model or component which will work in developing and expanding on my design which each iteration.

Wednesday 23 May 2018

Fuel Tank

Assignment 2 of BEIL 0014Digital Making

Fabrication of a Fuel Tank: A Step by Step.

3D Model

There are various techniques to get a 3d model of a fuel tank for this project. One is to take photos of a fuel tank of all angles to then put into the software Recap, by Autodesk, to reconstruct into a virtual 3D model. Second, is to measure the fuel tank and select from a variety of 3D CAD software to then model the tank. Third, is to find a pre-existing 3D model fuel tank online and use that.

My group and I measured out the fuel tank and used 3D modeling software Rhino/Grasshopper to construct the tank virtually. From there we exported the model as an stl. file to then put into a 3D model slicing software called 'Slicer', a Fusion 360 plug-in from Auto Desk.

Slicer

Import the stl. file of the fuel tank straight into the Slicer program by either pressing the import button in the top left-hand corner or by drag and drop into the program from a documents folder.

From there, set the size of the material, you will laser cut from, from either the pre-set dimensions or custom set the dimensions. The size of the plywood my group and I use the cam in 3x400x800mm sheets, thus I set the dimensions to 400x800mm.

The number of segments was set to 16, so to provide enough structural integrity and definition, whilst not having to use too much plywood. More or fewer sheets can be used depending on limitations of the material, cost, etc.

the thickness of the sheets is determined by the value at the bottom of the screen. At first, we set the value the 3mm so that the program sets the thicknesses of the slots to the thickness of the sheet so when we assemble it will fit.

Illustrator

Export the pdf. of the pieces used to create the skeleton model, into illustrator to then edit an adjust for a more space efficient layout.

Laser cut

Then use the illustrator program, we print the lines to the laser cutter. Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world, and the sheets would not fit together as there wasn't a big enough tolerance for the sheets. Trying to piece it together resulted in pieces breaking. So to save time we recut the pieces with a slot gap of 3.05mm. After laser cutting again we CAREFULLY assembled the skeleton model.

Assemble

The slicer program uses an x-axis/y-axis number system to align the pieces together to create the 3D skeletal model.

glue

Paper Templates

After assembling the laser cut pieces we then applied PVA glue to the joins for extra strength. Then covered our the skeletal model in strips of masking tape to create a 'smooth' skin for an easier reference. To make the paper templates I first measured out the length needed for my paper and then estimated the radius curvature of the tank's streamline. giving myself an inch gap I cut along the arch of the tank to create a shape the resembled the profile of it.

Cutting Aluminium Sheets

Using the templates we made, we traced out the part of the fuel tank, onto a piece of annealed sheet aluminum. I then used a combination of the foot operated guillotine, leaver shears, and hand shears to cut away excess material.

Shaping

the final part of the process is to take the cut out metal sheets and shape it into the mold for a tight fit. to start off I used a sandbag and plastic mallet to start with the basic shape of the curve. every couple of hits it would hold my metal up to the mold to see where which areas need more work than others. once o got the arch of the tank right I moved on to the edges of the metal to make them round over for a smoother join. Using a male tool this time, I worked the metal around a ball anvil so to work one curve without flattening out the other curve.

This method while it worked took longer than anticipated resulting in me running out of time towards the end and not being able to put a good finish on it. In the future, hand making molds, whilst litte bit time consuming, will enable me to have a cleaner more accurate shape at the end.