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Post date: Oct 10, 2017 6:53:21 PM
Above is the final product of what i have made in the fab lab. I used wood stain to make it this color. The color of the wood stain was called gun stock. I chose this color because it look similar to one of the chair that were pre-production made. Even though it took me a while in and out of class I am glad at the final piece came out to be. This project challenged me in new ways, and made me think in different ways as it took me to a new level of engineering.
This is my sketch of my chair design. I am trying to make a modern-ish design of a chair. That does not use bolts to stay together. I want to make the chair interlock, so it does not require hand tools to put together. It will be made out of wood on the cnc mill machine. I want the wood thickness to be about a 3/4 inch thick or so. It will be a stationary chair on the ground, that will be strong enough to sit in.
I used this website for inspiration to design my chair. I downloaded the software from this site to use to design and create my chair.
http://www.sketchchair.cc/
Ray Eames Biography video to understand the basis of the design he made.
https://www.ted.com/talks/the_design_genius_of_charles_and_ray_eames
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/charles-ray-eames-the-architect-and-the-painter-interview-directors-jason-cohn-and-bill-jersey/1952/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/charles-ray-eames-the-architect-and-the-painter-about-the-film/1921/
How to Bend Plywood
http://www.instructables.com/id/CC-Chair-How-to-Bend-Plywood/
Instructable on how to print a LCW chair without having to bend it
http://www.instructables.com/id/P9L-Lounge-Chair-made-with-CNC-Router/
I will be doing this first, so I can understand the design. I will look at this to model my own design of the LCW Eames chair.
This is my first attempt at using the CNC Mill Machine, but it did not turn out to well because the machine had a malfunction. I am attempting this same idea again to learn how to use and design on vcarve pro as well as the shopbot 3 software. IN the end i intend for this mini project to turn out to be a box. This connects to my project because it teaches me how to use the machine.
This was my next attempt in class to tr to work the CNC Mill Machine, and i as not successful. I had the page setup wrong, and the tabs were in the wrong place.
Finally I was able to successfully use the CNC Mill, and made this oval holder. It took a while, but soon i will be able to use the machine to print the chair, so i can start bending plywood.
This is the final box made on the cnc Mill with a top. It took a while, but i was finally able to learn the cnc mill.
I tested out the design of the LCW Eames chair on a small piece of wood to see if it will work. The tabs broke off as it was cutting, so for my final file i have to make the tabs taller, so they do not break off.
I will be using a 96x48x.75 piece of wood to cut this piece.
http://www.instructables.com/id/P9L-Lounge-Chair-made-with-CNC-Router/
I used the dwg file from this website to print the chair. I edited the position of the tabs to make sure the material will stay in place.
I have cut out my chair using the big shopbot machine. It took a while but it finished. The problem i encountered was that on the bottom of the sheet it began to fray. I cut out all my pieces from the wood, and began to round the edges. I used a handheld routing machine to round all the edges, and i used a 1/8 inch bit. I practice before i began on all pieces.
Above are some pictures of the pieces and the rounded edges. To round the edges I used a router, and it was very challenging because i had to learn how to use it for the first time. The router was very challenging to use because if you pushed to hard (like me) you get a lip on the piece of wood. Luckily since i will be staining it should not show as much.
I put my chair partly together, and realized some of the pieces did not fit exactly. There was some room left between the pieces, so I have to sand down some of the connecting pieces. After I dry connect the pieces, I will have to wood glue it together, so it can hold the weight to sit. After it is completely put together and dry I will stain the whole chair a lighter brown. Overall this process has taught me a lot about how exact the measurements have to be and how careful you have to be for setting up the machine settings.
I will sand down the edges again to make it super smooth.
https://www.popularwoodworking.com/techniques/rules_for_sanding_wood
I have started to glue the pieces together using Gorilla Wood Glue. I found it a little challenging to clamp the odd down as some pieces have weird shapes and need to be bent.
This glue says to clamp for 20-3 mins then let dry for 24 hours to complete the binding of the two materials.
Above are pictures of how i clamped the materials.
I went in the fab lab when i did not have class and began to glue other pieces together. The wood glue holds super strong as some of the pieces have already dried. I have put a lot of time and effort in making this chair close to perfect, but there have been some challenges along the way.
All the separate pieces have been glued together, and now it is time for me to connect them all and glue them together. I was very challenging for me to get the clamps to fit, and still make sure it was straight, but i did it after a while. Not only have i learned how to use different machines in the fab lab, I have also learned how to better design and the process you go at to design. I am not the best at drawing, but my mechanical skills make it up for it. The drawing part of the project was a little harder for me because it was hard to tell what went where and all. Although i was challenged by drawing I was able to still use a design and modify to make the chair work. I have learned a lot about the different machines in the fab lab, and this knowledge that i have come across further pushed by desire to go into engineering in college.
Below are various pictures of the machines i used to create my chair. I had to learn how to use each machine which took some time. It was interesting how much work goes into designing and creating a chair.
Below are some more pictures of me gluing my pieces together. It became a challenge when the pieces started to move withing in the glue, so i had to use a nail gun to nail them down together. This made sure that the pieces would stay together and not move when the glue was drying. The nails are not the strong binding point because they are very thin, so the glue is the main binding material used to hold the pieces together with strength.
This project taught me a lot about designing and constructing, and the hard work that goes into engineering and designing. Even though it took me awhile it was all worth it because i really enjoyed learning and using the various machines. Designing is probably the hardest part for me, but constructing the material i am very good with because i am more of a hands on kinda guy.
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