Week #3 - Journal

I liked the idea of making pen holders with separate holes for each pen. I also wanted to create something that could retain its shape while using minimal materials.

Some of the designs I saw were more appealing to me than others.

I liked the Pelikan and Slytherin ones, but they had some limitations: they could only hold one object and would have to be very solid to be durable and not break easily, which would require a lot of material given that we're using plastic (PLA).

So I went with the honeycomb and buckyball pen holders. They both look great, fit what I was going for with few materials, and take advantage of the 3D printer's advantage for fine details.

• First I drew a sketch.

• I drew half a circle and revolved it around the axis to create a sphere.

• Then I drew the hexagon and used the project feature to put it exactly on top of the sphere.

• Then I used the extrude and shell features to achieve the thickness I intended for the hexagon (to roughly fit the diameter of the pen)

• I used the circular pattern feature twice to create the pattern across the sphere. (across y and z)

• I then used the combine feature (set to cut) to combine the pattern and the sphere.

Then I right-clicked the component and chose "Save as Mesh" to save it as an STL file.

I used Ultimaker Cura to slice the model to get it ready for printing within the assignment requirements. I scaled it down to 45% of its original size and set the printing settings to:

• Layer Height: 0.3mm

• Overhang angle: 65

• Infill: 10%

(p.s. I also moved it away from the center, per Ahmed the lab specialist's recommendation.)

Sliced info was 13 (g) in 1h 10m time.

I then turned on the 3d printer and preheated the plate before loading the black filament and selecting my file from the print from SD option.

The actual printing took exactly 59 minutes. After printing, I removed the brim and supports and used sanding paper to remove excess material and make it look better.

I learned how to make a geometric pattern on a circular path from what my peers designed at the start of the week session, while I was making a boring cuboid and a tin can.

Thank you, guys

It took several attempts for me to get to this final shape, primarily because the polygons were not connected, which I didn't realize until I was slicing on Ultimaker Cura.

Slicing on Fusion early on would have saved me a lot of time. I went over the design about three times. In the end, I decided to create a pattern of 7 geometries around one axis and then use these 7 geometries (after checking their spacing and dimension) and revolve them one more time around the other axis to create the spherical shape.

But, because I learned by doing, I eventually turned to YouTube. I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for, but I discovered the project feature and the thin extrude feature, which saved me a lot of time in finalising (and recreating) the design.

I'm still looking for something to serve as a visualizer for the music the device will be making; I want to simulate movement, and I'm thinking about alternatives to actual mechanical pieces.

One of my design's remixes piqued my interest. And I'm considering using flat geometry and stereographic projection to either replace or supplement the 3D-printed parts.