Week #3 - Journal

This week's assignment is to design a pen and pencil holder model that may rest on a flat surface.

Earlier this week I had an activity with my group. The instructor Eng. Ahmed Ibrahim asked us to choose a creature we think we like most, or we feel it has a part of our personality. I chose the honey bee, especially the worker type. I feel I can't stop working and caring after the hive and the new generation.

This gave me an idea of making this week's assignment as a bee hive with a small bee buzzing on it.

For printing the design; Prusa MK2 3D Printer was used as this is the available 3D printer in FLE in Maadi. I tried to use the yellow PLA as a 3D printer filament but it wasn't available in the place. Therefore, I used a neutral color like white to be able to color it with acrylic colors later on.

In the preparation step:

• I drew the 2D design in a new sketch in Fusion 360 as 3 equal hexagons adjacent to each other.

  • • CREATE>Polygon>circumscribed polygon>20mm for drawing the first hexagon with 6 sides

    • CREATE>Polygon>circumscribed polygon>20mm for drawing the second hexagon with 6 sides

    • COSTRAINTS> Coincident (choose two points to constrain the two shapes together.

    • CREATE>Polygon>circumscribed polygon>20mm for drawing the third hexagon with 6 sides

    • COSTRAINTS> Colinear (choose two sides to constrain all shapes together.

    • Finish sketch

• I extruded the three hexagons with 3 different heights (60, 40, and 20mm)

  • • Extrude>New body (for the first hexagon)

    • Extrude>join (for the next two hexagons)

• I shelled all the 3 hexagons with three different thicknesses (3, 2, and 1mm respectively).

  • • Shell> inside> 3mm for the first hexagon

    • Shell> inside> 3mm for the second hexagon

    • Shell> inside> 3mm for the third hexagon

• I figured out after revising the project minimum requirements that I need to use another 3D design feature. Therefore, I designed a model of a buzzing bee just above the highest hexagon.

• I drew the 2D design in the same sketch starting with constructing a new plane 60mm from the normal zy plane. I started with a rectangle of 25mm x 4mm.

  • • CONSTRUCT>offset plane

    • Edit sketch

    • create>rectangle>2points rectangle

• I made fillet to two edges of the rectangle to mimic the honey bee body shape.

  • • Fillet> R7.5

    • Trim extra lines

    • Finish sketch

• I revolved this shape around its axis at 360 angles, then moved the hole shape to be parallel to the hive level.

  • • revolve> join

• The appearance of the object was modified

  • • MODIFY> appearance> mirror for the honey bee

for the intermediate hive--> Paint enamel glossy black

for the other two --> Paint enamel glossy yellow

• The saved file as STL has been sliced using Ultimaker Cura and the gcode file was prepared.

• The options have been optimized as shown in the picture but the time needed for printing is still high.

• I had to decrease the scaling to 75% to go with the tight time slot.

The printing process; Prusa MK2 3D Printer was used as this is the available 3D printer in FLE in Maadi. I tried to use the yellow PLA as a 3D printer filament but it wasn't available in the place. Therefore, I used a neutral color like white to be able to color it with acrylic colors later on.

I transferred the file to the printer as the gcode using the SD card. I used the default printing options and the specialist helped me a lot. It was fun to watch the printer printing such a project that I designed from scratch. I wasn't so small as I expected.

I spent a nice time coloring it using acrylic colors.

I made more than one design not expecting the volume of the project and the tight time slot. That upset me a bit and I had to change my printing slot reservation to find time to design a new smaller design.

The final product needs some special artistic plastic parts, that can be designed and printed with 3D printing. This week's assignment helped me excel using Fusion 360. I am now ready to design all required components for the final project.

I was so excited following tutorials that helped me to design nice artistic vases. They are really cool and very easy to do.

This week I have laser-cut the previous week's project and colored it with the same acrylic colors.