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Post date: Jan 29, 2018 7:44:45 PM
My name is Daniel Kotrebai, and attached is my logo. The logo is my initials, D.K. The logo is in bubble letters because I often used to write out my name in bubble letters when I got bored. The bottom of the D ends in a point because that is how I always write the D in my name. The end of the K is also pointed at the top to match the D, and overall my logo looks like it could belong to a superhero. In addition, DK is also the initials for Donkey Kong, who is my favorite Mario character. As this was my first design ever using adobe illustrator, it took me a long time to make because I had to think about everything before I was able to do it or even find the tool to do it. I definitely enjoyed the process though because I was constantly learning and making new discoveries.
This is the laser cut version of my logo. If I recut my logo I would make it so that the area of wood around where the D was rastered is greater. Something cool that I learned when cutting my logo is that to change where the laser cutter will start cutting from, you press cancel XY button, and then you can manually move the laser to where you want to start cutting from.
This is the brainstorming process I went through while I was coming up with my logo. Originally it seemed like a daunting task to come up with 12 different possible logos, but I was able to come up with them pretty quick. It wasn't so much having to think of them, but ideas for them just came to me in a little burst. Picking my favorites took a little bit because I had 4 that I had to narrow. Then having to make notes on why I chose these specific designs was also challenging but in a good way because it forced to reflect on why I made the decisions that I made. Next, the process of getting feedback was helpful because it helped me to perfect the details of my logo to make it into something that I really liked. I ended up moving around some of the lines and changing their thickness and the ending of the K to make it into a point.
This is the first project that we did in class. It was good to learn basics with cutting with the x-acto knife and measuring out shapes and also where the supplies in the room are located. The paper box turned out really well because the paper itself had almost no thickness, but the cardboard did, and I did not account for that so my box was the wrong size. I now know to account for the thickness of the material when aiming for certain dimensions.
This project taught me a lot of the basics that I will for different ways and methods to manipulate cardstock for making models. The most challenging one to do was score and shape and the most fun one was 3D, for which I used a stencil to cut out triangles. I worked with Erica for this project which was good practice for teamwork in the Fablab.
Starting to work with 3D designing onTinkercad was definitely easier than when I first used Adobe Illustrator. This is probably partially because I had experience from working with Adobe Illustrator, though the two platforms are completely different. Of course, being in 3D, there is a whole new dimension to work in, but this also adds the option of making objects hallow. In illustrator, you could remove objects from other objects to take the shape of one object out of the other, but in tinkercad, when you can use this same concept to make objects hallow. In addition, the work plane tool is another interesting option that Tinkercad has that adobe illustrator doesn't. Adding a workplane allows you to single in a certain side of 3D shapes and focus on working on them.
I printed out 2 different versions of my logo. One of them, the gold one, I placed on the back of my phone, and the second one, the blue one, I am unsure of as to where I will put it. Originally for the gold sticker, I only made some small changes to my design from when it was laser cut. While the laser cutter can detect the thickness of lines and etch accordingly, all lines are cut the same way on the vinyl cutter, so the design for my logo became slightly blurred together. To make it so that different parts of the logo would stand apart more. I did this by adding moving the D and the K farther apart from each other and removing the middle of the parts that would have been etched on the laser cutter. This made the sticker hard to pick apart, but the result looked much better! From this project, I learned how to export a file from illustrator into cut studio where I could further edit it and eventually print it. The most interesting that I learned to be able to cut with the vinyl cutter was how to have the machine scan the paper for size
We did this project on the first day and I finished some of the drawings about a month later. For the drawings, I got to use some of the drawing techniques that I learned from Sklad in Art Fundamentals last year.
Designing some objects in tinkercad is much more difficult than designing them in illustrator because you are so much more restricted and can only use the shapes that are pre-set. Because of this, I had to change on part of my logo, the line on the very left of the D. However, I actually really like how this made my logo look because I think it now looks sleeker and more futuristic than before. In illustrator, I had a lot of details in my logo design that were meant to make my logo appear 3D, but in TinkerCad, all objects are 3D automatically, so I was able to greatly simplify my design. I actually ended up using this new logo as a design in my clock project. This project was my first time using a 3D printer, so it was a very cool experience. I grew more comfortable with the software since I got to practice using it. The instructions by the printer made the process easy to learn and know what settings to set the printer to. My logo printed in about 30 minutes because I was relatively small.
For designing my name stand I used the grid tool in illustrator, with each small box being 1/8 inch, the thickness of the wood that I would be cutting the name stand out of. I got to use the grid tool for this, and practicing with it was super helpful since many future projects involved it. With the grid, it was easy to make the holes in the base be the size of the tabs that would go into them and make sure that the holes and the tabs were the same distance apart. Using the laser cutter again required me to refresh my memory since I had only used it once before, but I think going through the process again will make it so that I'll remember everything for next time.
I started making my glasses by looking up sunglasses to get some ideas for different possible design options. I then did some quick thumbnail sketches of ideas that I saw and liked and also some that came up with. I finally decided on a design that matched my actual glasses really closely since I thought it would be super cool to make my own version of my own glasses.
I started off by making some measurements so that I would know what size I need to make my glasses. I then sketched on regular paper a more detailed version of what my glasses would look like, along with the measurements that I made. I then cut out a paper model out of cardstock to see how well the measurements that I made would fit me.
From here I made the adjustments that I saw fit, taking into account the feedback of some others, and on graph paper made another sketch of my glasses. I then moved on to illustrator, where I designed the glasses to be ready to cut. Making the shape of the lenses look good in illustrator was probably the most challenging part of the entire project. The warped circular shape of the bottom of the glasses was hard to create and then making a smaller version of the line on the inside to create space in between for the frame was also challenging. This was because I could not just scale the entire thing to be smaller because then it would not connect to the rest of the glasses the way I wanted them to. I learned new commands in adobe from this project such as how to reflect parts of the glasses to make sure it was symmetric and over become much more proficient with illustrator as I used it a lot for this project.
I laser cut two versions of my glasses, a cardboard one, from which I tweaked my design a little more, mainly the height of my glasses, and then a final one out of wood. I made the parts of the glasses that go down my head and towards my ears blue and the front of the glasses red, my two favorite colors. I learned to cover the colored wood with tape then cutting to preserve the color. I connected the two parts of my glasses with a hole in the front part that I could push the back parts through so that they would stay without glue. I am very happy with how the final product turned out and everything that I learned from designing the glasses.
This was the class's second 3D printing project. I decided to make a glow circuit instead of a complex part or chess pieces because I just immediately liked that idea better. This was my first more complex thing that I made in tinkercad and a spent a lot of time looking for ideas of what can be done and at different parts that can be created or used. I decided on a cupcake with a candle because I thought that it was fitting since the light from the LED could be like the fire from the candle and I used a filament that was partially translucent to facilitate this. In addition, I added a hole in the shape of my initials to the cupcake for light to escape through. I did a decent amount of math (just easy proportions) for the project so that I could get the cupcake to the right size for the glow circuit to fit inside of it and still have the dimension ratios that I wanted. The practice activity we did with getting the glow circuit aligned was very useful practice and it allowed me to confidently apply the skills I had learned to make the cupcake. Since I had already printed the 3D version of my logo, I was able to use the printer pretty well and I knew what I had to do without looking at the instruction sheet. The cupcake looks super cool with a light on the inside when its dark and even shines blue when there is a white light inside it because of the special filament.
Fab Academy Snow Day Assignment
One student, Jasmin Cheng, created a holdable heart. She set out to create a device that could monitor your heart rate and which you could hold and would pulse at the same rate as your heart was beating. Her final project ended up being like her original design mostly, except for the LED lights that she added and the design of the case for the silicon egg (the egg being what would mimic your heart). She had to change the version of Arduino that she was going to use to accommodate the size of her design. The most challenging part was that the servomotor she needed to use so that the egg would be small enough to be holdable was weak. This meant she had to be very precise with were in the egg she placed the motor and what density she made the silicon for the egg. I picked this project because I am interested in the heart (cardiomyocytes are the topic for my STEMM project) so the title of the project grabbed my attention. The project, however, was not about treating heart problems but about mental health because the idea behind the holdable heart is that seeing your own heartbeat will make you feel more connected to yourself.
http://fabacademy.org/archives/2015/as/students/cheng.jasmin/final-project.html
An idea for a fablab project that I have is to make a buoyant case for my GoPro or other GoPro accessories such as a selfie stick. Another project idea that I like is to make my own electric stim machine because I used one a lot at physical therapy after my knee surgeries and I thought they were super interesting (though this might not be a very realistic idea).
An interest that I would love to connect to this class is medicine. One example of this is the stim machine mentioned above. Another project related to medicine would be building a pneumatic or hydraulic arm. I built a very simple one in 8th grade and I would be interested in designing my own more advanced one and laser cutting or 3D printing it.
A started off my design process by making thumbnail sketches to get down as many ideas as I could. Some of the ideas were inspired by images I saw online while others were completely original. At first, I wanted to make a light but then decided that I liked the idea of making a clock better. I had a few really cool thumbnail sketches but finally decided that I liked the idea of making a clock that looked like a watch the best.
I moved on from thumbnail sketches to larger and more detailed drawings to figure out specifically what I wanted to create. I then started adding dimensions to my drawings and drew out the more detailed watch band onto graph paper.
Next, with my ideas down on paper, I moved to using computer software. In illustrator, with a grid that matched up with the scale I used on the graph paper, I designed a version of my clock to print onto cardboard. The most difficult part of this was arranging the numbers so that they were spaced evenly. Illustrator doesn't have a protractor tool so I had to come up with a different method to measure where each number belongs. I used the line tool and made lines the length of the radius that I started in the center, and had created each 30 degrees of the one before it since the 360 degrees in the circle divided by 12 numbers is 30 between each. From this, I knew where to put each number, which I had decided to do in Roman numerals because I thought it looked cleaner and classier. I also added an outside ring to give the clock more dimension and look more like a watch and a hole in the center so that the clock hands would fit.
After I had the cardboard prototype, I received feedback on it from the class during the class we had when we looked at what everyone had so far to give them feedback and constructive criticism. This was actually super helpful because someone suggested that I make the band for the clock bendable and go all the way around like a real watch's band would. I looked at examples of kerf bending online, which is how I would make the wood bend so it could be the watch band, and looked at examples that were inside the fablab, and decided that I would be able to make this idea work. I studied a lot of kerf options and finally decided on one that looked the coolest as a watch band. I measured out using paper how long and thick the band should be so that it goes all the way around and looks good. I filled in this area after I created it in illustrator by taking the sample kerf from a file I downloaded and copying and pasting it, arranging it nicely, and then copying and pasting the bigger chunk to be efficient. It was hard to line the kerf up perfectly because it was pretty complex but I was able to do it by zooming in a lot and really studying the design.
I cut out the kerf on cardboard first to make sure that it would work, which it did, and I then moved on to adjusting the clock design to accommodate the new strap. I removed the pieces on the top and bottom that were supposed to simulate a strap before (which was sad because I had spent a lot of time on them but I had a much better design now). I also changed the Rolex logo that I had placed on the cardboard version for my own name and logo, which we made early in the year. I learned to this from Micheal Shade, because I wanted to use the 3D tinkercad version of my logo, not the SVG file illustrator one. Micheal taught me how to use Corel draw to outline images and create vectors for them so that they could be copied into illustrator.
I cut out the kerf bend onto actual wood and then placed it in water, while it was held in the shape I wanted it to bend in. I had to be creative finding objects that I could use to hold it in shape. I then let it dry while held in the position I wanted it to be in overnight, and the result was great when I checked in on it the next morning.
I also cut out an acrylic circle to use as a watch glass (my first time using the laser cutter for acrylic) and made its dimensions so that it would snap into the outside circle ring I had and stay in place. I still cut out a thicker ring to place above it just so make sure the acrylic would be held in place.
Finally, I glued everything together with tacky glue and used lots of clamps to hold it together while things dried. I then added the hands to the clock, and my project was finished. I am extremely happy with the final product and I think it looks amazing and I am also proud of myself for the work that I put into the project.
Final Write Up and Presentation
During this semester, I became proficient at using illustrator to design in 2D using vectors and tinkercad to design in 3D. I also gained knowledge on how to use the various machines around the FabLab: the laser cutters, the 3D printers, and the vinyl cutter. What I think to be even more important though is the method of thinking that design thought me, and I know that it will help me greatly even outside of the FabLab.
I had always struggled with trying to make everything perfect right away and I used to obsess over minor details, missing the big picture. It hurt my work in the past and greatly affected my efficiency. By practicing the design process in this class (especially the part about generating ideas in the early stages of the design process), I learned that it is crucial to think about the big picture 1st to generate ideas, because the more you come up with, the better chance you have of creating something great.
I realize now that there will be time later to perfect things and work out details (why there is prototyping and testing) and that these things don't have to be done immediately. I have already seen this new approach I have learned benefit me in other class, such as for planning out an essay in humanities, or writing up a procedure for a lab in AP Chem.
There is not much that I would change, except to maybe have more interns in the FabLab to help students with questions, because Mr. D cannot always get to everyone. Also, many times an intern would be more than enough to answer more simple questions. I would also suggest a set of shelves or cubbies (similar to my idea for ones in the pool) to help store student work more efficiently.
I felt the most challenged when we started something new, and I had to figure out where to begin. Examples of this were when we had to make the glow circuit in tinkercad or I was making the kerf bend for my watch strap. However, these were also the times that I enjoyed the most because I really got to be independent, and go off on my own to think and come up with solutions. Finally, these were also some of the times when I felt the proudest because it is an amazing feeling when you make a breakthrough on your own and then get to build your work from there. I think the proudest I felt overall was when I finished my watch because it is the project I spent the most time on, coming in during breaks and free blocks to print and work. I was also super excited about the design concept that I had, and seeing my ideas as a tangible object in front of me, the fruit of my hard work and effort, was a great experience, especially since I was very happy with the final product.
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