Soap Project - MEOW

Project Description

What is the project?

This project is about making a soap mold to express love and appreciation for an important someone in our lives. We will CAD a model of the soap using TinkerCAD or Fusion360, before using it to make a silicone mold and produce the soap. On our soap, we will include a personalized design for the person we are making it for, incorporating detail to make it unique and special. 

Requirements and guidelines:

This project must be:

• Created using TinkerCAD Codeblocks or Fusion360

• 2"-3" in diameter and 1"-1.5" in height

• Made without assistance from external sources, like the internet and AI

• Recorded and explained in a separate portfolio page

Brainstorm

Who do you design this project for?

I designed this project for a friend, Shijun, of who I am very familiar with. We are family friends and have known each other since birth.

What inspired you to come up with the project idea? 

I was inspired by my friend's interest in robotics and our shared love for cats. He is also learning Japanese, so I included that too. In the end, my design was of a Robo-Cat with Japanese text saying "こんにちわ" and an English text saying "MEOW".

What message does your design convey? Include the catchy tagline that you come up with.

There is no particular message my design conveys, it is just a fun character for my friend and I to enjoy. As such, the tagline is just "MEOW", highlighting our fun and sometimes absurd friendship.

Which resources and research did you use? 

Throughout this project, I used various apps to design, model, and create my idea. They are listed below along with their purpose:

• Procreate - sketching my idea

• Fusion 360 - CADing various designs

• Bambu Handy - printing a 3D model of my CADs

I also used a silicone mold and soap mixture to turn the printed design into a mold and create the soap. 

I did not do research on this project.

Hand sketch picture:

CAD

List steps you used to CAD your models:

I used Fusion360 to CAD my model.

1. I sketched a circle 3" in diameter and extruded it to create the body of the soap.

2. I uploaded a canvas of my design onto the cylinder and calibrated it to fit the size of the cylinder.

3. I used the fit point spline tool to trace my design in a sketch.

4. I extruded various parts of the sketch at different heights to contrast sections and turn my design 3D.

5. Some parts were too small to show up, so I fixed some small details by scaling and rearranging items.

6. I repeated Step 5 a few times after printing to make sure everything would turn out right. Some parts were deleted as there was not enough space on the cylinder.

Reflections - SOUL

S - Strength of your work:

I think the strength of my work was the hard work I put into it, regarding the many iterations of CADing that I had to do and the detail I had to put in when fit point splining my design. 

O - Opportunities to improve your project:

There was definitely opportunity to improve my project in making things right the first time and certain design choices. Furthermore, I feel that if I understood the constraints of the project better earlier on, I could have avoided certain mistakes and unfavorable design choices. Lastly, I think I could have been more efficient — I was a little slow to decide on a design and actually start it, meaning that there were some issues towards the end where I had to cram.

U - Understanding, what you learned through this project:

I think I became much more proficient in Fusion360 and now am able to navigate the available tools more efficiently as a result of this project. In addition, on a broader scale, I learned to recognize the limitations of a project and to avoid unnecessary complications and overthinking when making designs.

L - Limitations you encountered in this project:

The key limitations I encountered while doing this project included the natural constraints of the materials we were using. The main thing I struggled with was the inability of the 3D printer, silicone mold, and soap mixture to pick up on smaller details and text, meaning that I had to either scale up certain components of my design or delete them all together. This caused a lot of issues during the process. 

WISCR - which learning skills did you apply/practice often in this project:

I think the main two skills I applied from WISCR during this project included S (Self-Motivated) and C (Clear Communicators). For S, I think that this project was relatively independent regarding the CADing process, and as such I was able to demonstrate self-motivation in completing my project, even coming in during lunch break to finish it. For C, I was able to help my peers in their projects, clearly communicating with them to understand what they needed and how to help them. 

Thank you for viewing!