Week #1 - Journal 

Ideation 💡

Tell us about your assignment's idea for this week. Why do you care about this idea? What inspired you? (Please include images or links to sources of inspiration)

"Luke, I am Your Father" — Darth Vader

The first week assignment of the maker diploma was to design and fabricate a single piece 2D model to laser cut it and a 3D model to 3D print it in the lab. We also had to pick the designs from an open-source CAD library. I picked the design for the 3D printing from Thingiverse in an .STL format. And for the laser cutting, I browsed 3axis.co and picked a 2D model in a .DXF format. 

Although there were some requirements for the assignment, picking the designs to be fabricated was our choice. I really liked that because it gave me the space to be creative and get excited about the final products. 

I wanted to create something that reflects my personality and proudly put/hang it in my office/room. I went through pages and pages of designs until I picked the below: 

Tool Chain 🛠️

Which software/machines/materials did you use in the assignment? Why?

3D Printing

Laser Cutting

IMG_3647.MOV
IMG_3646.MOV

Design/Preparation Process 👩‍💻

Explain the design and/or preparation process of your assignment. How did you use the tool or software to design and/or prepare your assignment before fabrication/implementation?

3D Printing

I used Ultimaker-Cura to prepare the Darth Vader design to 3D print the model. 

I started by dragging and dropping the .STL file into Cura, then I clicked slice. The design was too big (the time was almost 7 hours), so I scaled it down to 30%. Also, I changed the print settings to the following:

After that, I sliced the model and the result was 35 minutes and 5g. Finally, I exported the file in .gcode format, named it as the estimated time and weight of the print, and put it on an SD card.

Laser Cutting

I used LaserWork V6 to prepare the Wolf Wall Art Polygon and Coaster to laser cut the designs.

I started by importing the .DXF designs into LaserWork, then I scaled them down a little and moved them to be right next to the origin (the green square). Also, I set the settings to the following:

After that, I checked the preview and everything looked good. Finally, I saved the file in .rld format and I put it on a flash memory. 

Development/Implementation Process ⚙️

Explain the development/implementation process of your assignment. How did you use the machine/tool to manufacture or implement the design of your assignment?

To fabricate/print the 3D design, I did the following steps:

To fabricate/laser cut the 2D designs, I did the following steps:

Overcoming Challenges 🥷

What kinds of challenges or problems did you face while doing the assignment, tutorials, or exercises?  How did you solve them? Did you ask for help from an instructor or peer? Please provide a link to the tutorial or article that you used to solve your problem (if any)

The first challenge that I faced was that LaserWork V6 only runs on Windows and not Mac. I had to look online for a similar software, but it was too complicated and I was already familiar with LaserWork from the videos, and I liked its simple interface. Then I downloaded a virtual machine (Parallels) to run Windows on Mac, but it took a lot of my disk space and made my laptop freeze and run slowly, so I couldn't do anything on it. The last resort that I had is to fix an old Windows laptop I have. So I did fix it, I downloaded LaserWork, and now it works perfectly.

The second challenge was with the laser cut coaster. It was very hard to remove the small pieces that were cut from the coaster — they were stuck. I struggled to get them out and not to break the fragile coaster. The Fab Lab specialist helped me and gave me tools that made it a lot easier. I used a wood chisel, screwdriver, cutter, and pen to push the small pieces out and smooth out the splinters. Luckily, I was able to remove everything with the coaster intact.

Final Project 🙌🏽

How can you use the skills and knowledge that you've acquired this week in your final project?

Smartphone Camera Rig

Laser cutting and 3D printing are essential tools that I will be using for my final project, and they will help me construct my ideas and make adjustments.

My final project idea is to make a smartphone camera rig with a stabilizer, slider (pan and tilt), tripod, LED lights, and mic for vlogging & live streaming.

WOW! 😮

What is the coolest thing that you've learned this week? What is something that you will never forget from this week?

Weekly Digest [OPTIONAL] 🤔

Tell us about any other cool things that you've made this week: in the Hands-on activity, tutorial examples, exercises, or any other cool mini-project that you tried out aside from the assignment.

Assignment Design Files 🗂️