Week 2 - Journal

Ideation

Tell us about your assignment's idea for this week. Why do you care about this idea? What inspired you? (Please include images or links to sources of inspiration)

This week I was assigned to Create a Cool Glasses for my personal use. It must be a mixed design, the front frame should be fabricated using a Laser cutter and the side arms should be fabricated using 3D printer.

My assignment's idea has come to my mind randomly when I was looking to my door's room and observed the keyhole 🤭. While spying from keyholes is of course a bad thing to do, however, it is a good visual metaphor which evokes curiosity, mystery and observation 😌.

Common keyhole

Fancy key

An eye peeking from keyhole

Fancy key

Tool Chain

Which software/machines/materials did you use in the assignment? Why?

For Designing:

Software: Fusion360

For Laser Cut:

Software: RDWorks

Material: 3mm wood sheets

Machine: El Malky ML149 CO2 Laser Cutter

For 3D Print:

Software: Ultimaker Cura

Material: PLA filament

Machine: Prusa MK3 3D Printer

Design/Preparation Process

Explain the design and/or preparation process of your assignment. How did you use the tool or software to design and/or prepare your assignment before fabrication/implementation?

Lens dimensions

Front frame design:

I started to design the front frame of the glasses on fusion, so after saving the file I started a sketch.
I drew the lens first by drawing a circle and then I made a rectangle at the bottom of it.
I used the dimension to set the angle between the side and the bottom of that rectangle to get the shape of a keyhole and used trim tool to remove the top side.
I used to the offset tool to make the thickness of the frame, then I started to make the bridge between lenses.
I used the 3-point arc to make the bridge and offset again to make thickness.
I used trim to cut the intersecting lines of the bridge with lens.
I drew small rectangles with circle on it for screw holes to connect with arms and used fillet to have rounded edges.
After that it was the time to mirror and make the second lens, so I made a construction line in the center of the arc and mirrored the lens.
I extruded the the frame with 3mm to simulate the wood except for the screw holes and gave it appearance of wood
I exported the sketch as .dxf file to adjust on RDWorks.

Front frame as fully defined sketch

extrusion feature

Appeareance of wood

Front frame preparation:

I imported the DXF file in RDWorks and then it didn't need adjustments.
As my design only needs cutting, I adjusted the parameters for the speed to be 40mm/s and for the power to be 45%.

Export sketch as DXF file

Lens dimensions

Side arm design:

I started sketching the side arm by drawing a rectangle.
then I drew two circles on the right side to be the head of the key.
I made the two big circles coincident with the vertex of the right side.
I drew a third circle and applied tangent between the three circles.
on the left side I drew it with lines to be like the key signature.
I extruded the key with 6mm to fit the nut width (5.5mm).
I made a circle inside a square on the tip for the screw and I made it as square to avoid the problem of shrinkage.
I drew a rectangle on the side for the nut (captive) .
I extruded both of them as cut.
I applied fillet with 1mm on the sides of the key.
I applied chamfer on the circles at the top with 1mm also.
I gave it appearance with paint metallic (dark grey).
I used offset plane to mirror the side arm in order to have final look on the design.
Finally, I exported the body as STL through save as mesh option.

aligning nut place with screw hole

circle dimensions and

after extruding screw and nut holes as cut

applying fillet with 1mm

applying chamfer with 1mm

Exporting the body as STL

Final look on the design

Side arms preparation:

I imported the STL file in Ultimate Cura .
I duplicated the side arm using ctrl+c (copy) and ctrl+v (paste).
Then I mirrored one key on x-axis so that the holes for the nuts are facing each other.
I choose the face that will touch the bed (outer side of the arm and nuts' places up).
I started to adjust the parameters.
with Resolution 0.3mm (layer height) and 15% infill density (inner content), I found that my design meet the constrains and the requirements without support and adhesion .
After slicing, the time turned out to be 1 hour and 27 minutes and 21g for the print.
I exported the design as g-code to with proper naming to be ready to transfer on SD card.

final look before exporting g-code

Development/Implementation Process

Explain the development/implementation process of your assignment. How did you use the machine/tool to manufacture or implement the design of your assignment?

For Laser Cutting:

I opened my file on the lab PC to take final look, then I pressed Download to send it to the machine.
This time I checked the focus of the nozzle and made sure it adjusted.
Using the machine interface I followed some steps to start cutting:

I pressed Esc button to exist from recent files.
Then I pressed File button to browse files and chose my file using arrows and Enter button.
After that I placed my wooden sheet with clamps and started to move the nozzle to the top-right corner.
I pressed Origin button to mark the position as initial and Frame button to preview my cut and make sure it is within the sheet limit.
Finally closed the machine doors and watched the magic happens!

Front frame after cut

For 3D Printing:

I started by transferring the g-code to the SD card.
I chose the grey filament and loaded it into the machine.
The printer started to preheat the filament and the bed.

Then I inserted the SD card and chose Print from SD option and chose my file.
The machine started to move around the bed to calibrate dimensions, then it started printing and I watched the first 3-4 layers to detect any errors.

Preheating step

Printing process

Side arms after printing

After cleaning

Final output of the glasses

Community of Learning

Did you ask for feedback? What are the ideas that others have contributed or suggested? What was someone else’s idea that you built upon? How did you help your peers? How did your peers help you?

Normal Lock

Someone gave me a suggestion for the bridge between lenses to be like the curve of a real lock like the image instead to a strict line.

Overcoming Challenges

When you got stuck, what/who did you turn to? At what point did you have to pause to research or learn more before moving on? What are some mistakes, pitfalls, or challenges that others can avoid if they were doing this assignment?

I faced a challenge to make the place for the nut aligned with the screw hole, it was really hard to do this because they are not on the same sketch. I started to use trial and error so I made a distance of 3mm from top for both, but it didn't work. The distance for the circle is between its center and top side (before I decided to draw a square), while for the rectangle is between top side and top key side. So, I searched online for screw hole and nut and I noticed that the center of circle is aligned with center of the rectangle. I tried to apply this solution, I created a point in the center of the rectangle, also on the common side giving it y-distance then I aligned both centers with point on common side using horizontal/parallel tool and it worked.

circle dimensions and nut place dimensions

Final Project

How can you use the skills and knowledge that you've acquired this week in your final project?

I learned a lot about fusion 360 and this will help me design my final project properly with suitable dimensions.

WOW!

What is the coolest thing that you've learned this week? What is something that you will never forget from this week?

My first ever 3D design!

Planter pot

Weekly Digest [OPTIONAL]

Tell us about any other cool things that you've made this week: in the Hands-on activity, tutorial examples, exercises, or any other cool mini-project that you tried out aside from the assignment.

Assignment Design Files

3D printing files:

Side arm [STL]

side-arm_PLAgrey_0.3mm_21g_1h27m [G-code]

Laser Cutting files

front frame [DXF]

front frame [rld]

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