Independent Creative Project 2

Independent Creative Project 2

Andy King

Goals:

This project was significantly different from all of my previous project, mainly because when I was thinking about how I should go about doing this project, I only had three remaining full class periods to work on it, which is far less than I've had for each project so far. I wanted to come up with one last final project that I would be happy with but it really couldn't take to long. I did consider just further working on my other independent creative project but I eventually decided that I was happy with it and I wanted to start something new. I also thought that after I completed my previous project I would be close to, but not quite at, an A-, and I did want that additional grade to hopefully get me there. After throwing around some ideas in my head like a epoxy fish tank that I had seem people at my table do I eventually, with the help of Mr. Supiro, came up with the idea of a magnetic chess set. It would be fairly simple, a square with a grid that had small hollowed out areas for magnetics so small pieces would stick. It wouldn't take long, and I would be able to play the greatest board game ever invented with it. It was ideal for the circumstances I was in.

Procedure

Planning

A chess board is a simple thing. It is a square with a grid on it, and after months of using Fusion 360 to make various things making a square wouldn't be difficult, but I needed more than a square. In order for the magnetic chess set to work, you need to have magnets for the pieces, which themselves will have magnets attached to them. To do this one side of the board would contain several holes for me to put magnets into later on. However first I needed to find and measure magnets. Finding them was easy, all I had to do was ask Mr. Supiro, but measuring them was annoying as they keep sticking to the caliper that I was using to measure them, and the magnets themselves were very small and hard to pry of each other. The magnets came out to be about 0.15in, so I decided that the holes should be 0.21 inches. I also did a proof on concept to make sure that the magnets would stick to each other through a piece of wood thicker than what I would use, and that did work, so I was all good to go.

Fusion 360

In what was probably the easiest thing I have ever done in Fusion 360 I created a 4x4in square which I promptly extruded upwards by 0.2in. I then created a 0.21in diameter circle, extruded it 0.5in into my square, and using a spacing of 0.3in created 8 more circles in one direction using a pattern, and then did the same thing with all previous 8 selected in the other direction, for a total of 64 holes. From there I went to using the setup which I did without much problem, the only thing was is that I knew I needed to do another step but I just couldn't remember what that was, I thought it was post processing but after asking Mr. Supiro he told me I needed a toolpath. Mr. Supiro helped me set that up quick and on I went to the CNC.

CNC Machine

The first thing I did to prepare for the CNC machine was to tape the piece of wood I was using down so it wouldn't slide around, then I went onto finishing post processing, sending an email to the CNC, and then loading up my job onto it. This was all easy as it was something I had done many times before and had no problems doing this time. Setting the x and y axis was straightforward, although I did accidentally set the wrong x axis, I didn't think it would matter because I was making a square but  Mr. Supiro pointed out to me that it would make the CNC think my design was somewhere it wasn't . After that I used the paper technique to set an ideal z axis, and then printed my board.

Illustrator

For my pieces I originally wanted to use Fusion360 to make 32 circles, and then make smaller circles inside of them for magnets however by this point I was in the last class period so time was of the essence and I didn't have any to do this. Instead I decided to use Illustrator to use the laser cutter to cut 32 circles out, engrave pieces onto them, and then I would just manually glue magnets on the bottom of each piece. The design was a grid of 0.4x0.x4in circles, with pieces then put to be engraved on them. I originally wanted to just import files of already made chess piece designs to save time but on the suggestion of Mr. Supiro I decided to instead trace out chess pieces from chess.com. Tracing the pieces was a little time-consuming but didn't take too long, copying and pasting them however did take awhile, as I had to manually align them with each circle. Furthermore, half the pieces had to have a stroke, but no fill (white) and the other half a fill but no stroke (black). 

Laser Cutter

I quickly got a windows computer and then emailed the illustrator file to myself, and then subsequently logged into the windows system to download and then print my design on the laser cutter. I went through the printing checklist very quickly with no help from Mr. Supiro and then on his recommendation used the Fusion Epilog Laser. I loaded up my job however I didn't realize that the laser cutter itself thought I had a different job loaded up so when I turned it one it ended up burning some of the material below the wood. I quickly realized my mistake and pressed to cancel the job, and the went to Mr. Supiro for assistance, who changed the priorities for jobs on the laser cutting and then told me to press start. The second time the pieces engraved but were not cut out. I didn't know why this was, I had properly set the circle line thickness to be 0.01 which should have indicated to the printer to cut them out but it didn't for whatever reason. Mr. Supiro once again came over and slightly adjusted my design so it would cut, and the third time everything went well, with exception to the fact that one of the fans wasn't working and this was causing the filtration system to not work, leading to a not ideal amount of smoke being released. 

The Future?

I didn't get to finish everything that I wanted to do, I just ran out of time to glue the magnets onto my pieces, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway because we didn't have the 96 0.15in magnets that I needed in total. However if I had more time and more magnets than I would've glued them on my pieces which would have completed my magnetic chess set. It wouldn't have been the most aesthetically pleasing thing ever but it would have worked, and also would've been one of the smallest chess sets that I had ever seen, let alone made. Something that I would have liked to have done also if had I more time was instead of making a circle and then engraving a piece onto it would have been making the wood into the shape of the piece, but due to the weird shape of some of the pieces I decided it would be much easier just to engrave them and not cut them.

Conclusion

To conclude this was definitely one of the most enjoyable projects that I had done, it also was the most efficiently that I had ever worked in this class, by this point in the year I feel I have developed a good understanding of the tools that we use for projects in this class. I only asked for Mr. Supiro's help a handful of times in this project and I got a lot done very quickly, I wouldn't have been able to do this same project in three days three months ago. I also used materials effectively, I didn't have to scape anything and unlike the previous project I didn't even use any test materials, instead all materials that were used are the things in the images below, along with some tape I used for the CNC. Despite the fact that I didn't really reach a point of true conclusion, with only a chess board instead of a magnetic one, I'm still overall pleased with the final outcome, and finishing this project won't take much longer anyway, and I'll probably complete it later on in office hours next year. Overall challenges for this project were minimal, all of the mistakes I could ahve made along the way I have already made before by this point and I was watching out for them. The only thing that really gave me trouble was the printer at the very end, as that didn't work in the way that I thought it would. If I were to do this exact same project again I would change 2 things mainly: I would make the pieces into actual 3d chess pieces with magnets inside of them instead of circles with chess pieces engraved on them, this would've been challenging, and I didn't have nearly enough time for it unfortunately but it would've made my project look much cooler, and secondly I would have tried made the board out of plastic, primarily to reduce warping as well as burn marks that result from the laser cutter. Overall I greatly enjoyed this project, and the only thing I really wished I had done differently was to start sooner so I could've made some of these extra ideas into reality.

Images:

Top left is the fully complete chess set, with all pieces set up to their apporipriate square, unfortunately though they aren't magnetic so will fall of easily. Overall the board is looking good though. Top right is the bottom, where you can see the 64 holes for the respective 64 square on the other side, I originally planned to glue magnets into these holes, but unfortunately I don't have enough magnets, as well as I ran out of time. Bottom left is my first Fusion 360 design, which looks exactly like my finished project, which is what I wanted. Bottom right is the Illustrator pieces I cut out, and I think that they are looking pretty good