Post date: Oct 24, 2017 6:49:53 PM
As this is my final post I would just like to say that my experience in this class has been great and I look forward to taking more courses in the fab lab in years to come. I really enjoyed being able to learn about all the new technology in the fab lab and how to use it because I believe that these are the tools of the future.
My project that I made is an Automata. What happens is when you turn the shaft on the side, the cam on the shaft rotates and pushes the shaft with the basketball up and down. This makes it look as if the guy on top is dribbling a basketball.
I the making of my project I used all of the machines except for the ShopBot. It was cool to see how you could integrate a piece made from so many machines to make one project.
I'd say that the thing that was really challenging for me was gluing the guy onto the box. I know this sounds kind of sad, but it was difficult to make sure he was in the right spot and use the right amount of glue to keep him standing.
In closing I had a great time taking this course and I would definitely recommend it to other students.
Today we came up with ideas of what our projects could be. The ideas i came up with were a glasses holder, a chair, a model plane, and finally a automaton toy.
Today I made the decision to make an automata. My idea for the automaton is a motorcycle doing a wheelie. On automata when you turn the crank on the side of it, it will spin a cam and the cam moves a cylinder up and down that will move front tire of the motorcycle up and down.
Mr. D also gave me a great website called robives.com which shows many simple automatons and also gives information on how to make them and the components inside.
Today Mr. D gave me a great website to create my box for my automaton called makercase.com. This website constructed the digital cutouts i needed for my box, then i printed them to inkscape and edited them with the things I needed for my box. although i did end up making a mistake because I accidentally mixed up a piece i needed a small circle in and the piece i wanted a bigger window in.
Today
I made the corrections to the box so now it has all the right this in all the right places. when i put it together, I realized that i need something to stabilize the top rod so I glued a bunch of little rings to the top of the box so that it would keep it stable.
The last couple of days I worked on making my wooden box. I used the same Inkscape page to make the wooden box as I used for the cardboard. One problem that I encountered was when I put the box together it didn't stay together as well as the cardboard. I thought this was because the wood was much more slippery than the cardboard, so I decided to to glue 5 of the sides together. I left one of the sides open so I could slide in the shaft without having to take off the cam everytime. Speaking of the cams for my first attempt making them I made 4 different size cams, but when i printed them, the size of the whole was just slightly too big. the next try i made the whole just a little smaller and it was perfect it fit. In the end i kept the 3 cams that worked the best.
Today, I worked on what my Automaton would be doing, with help from Mr. D I decided to make a Guy dribbling a basketball. My main focus of today though was to make ball. I decided it would be best to 3D print it. The hard part was making sure to have the right size whole inside the ball for the haft to fit into. The ball was not printed bu the end of class so I will see next time how the ball works out.
The ball worked out well, the only problem I had was that i had to sand down the shafts a little so that it would fit inside. My next step was to make a guy to be dribbling it. I did some searching on the internet for a good picture and then Tommy helped me edit it on coreldraw and then I was able laser cut it. Then I made orange paint using red and yellow which sadly took me awhile. after it was dry Mr. D told me i should just spray paint it so I am gonna do that next class.
Today I spray painted my ball and also made some finishing touches to make it look more like a basketball. I also realized in order to make a better working final project I needed to redo the box so I printed a new one. I had to make a couple of one side so that the whole on the top was a little smaller so the shaft does not come of the cam
Today I worked on making my final box. I made some final adjustments so that all the shafts would say in place. I also realized that the person I made was to small, so I made some adjustments and made him bigger. unfortunately I didn't have time to print him out though.
Today I printed out my bigger person and the size was perfect. My main goal now is to make get him glued on the box. I am gluing a small triangle to his foot so that he will stand on top of the box. sadly the first time I messed up and did not position the guy correctly so I had to redo the gluing, luckily the little triangle came off fine so there was no problem. This will be my goal of next time.
I would show pic of bigger guy although he looks exactly the same except a little bigger so I do not believe I need a picture.
I came in later today to finish up my project for the fab lab event later that day. I glues the guy to the box and so I was pretty much finished.
Today I was able to finish my project. I added some arrow stickers by the shaft so that you could see that you need to turn it. I made the arrow stickers using Cut Studio, which is the vinyl cutter program. I am happy with my project. Now I just need to work on my power point and wrap up all the online stuff.
As this is my final post I would just like to say that my experience in this class has been great and I look forward to taking more courses in the fab lab in years to come. I really enjoyed being able to learn about all the new technology in the fab lab and how to use it because I believe that these are the tools of the future.
My project that I made is an Automata. What happens is when you turn the shaft on the side, the cam on the shaft rotates and pushes the shaft with the basketball up and down. This makes it look as if the guy on top is dribbling a basketball.
I the making of my project I used all of the machines except for the ShopBot. It was cool to see how you could integrate a piece made from so many machines to make one project.
I'd say that the thing that was really challenging for me was gluing the guy onto the box. I know this sounds kind of sad, but it was difficult to make sure he was in the right spot and use the right amount of glue to keep him standing.
In closing I had a great time taking this course and I would definitely recommend it to other students.