Week 3 - Journal

This week's assignment was to design a small desk organiser to be produced fully using laser cutting (except for the brackets to be 3D printed if they are needed). I was inspired by this birch (furniture piece) called Isokon Penguin Donkey 1 (don't ask about the name!). Of course, since this is a furniture piece, I had to adjust its scale when drawing my sketch. Instead of holding books and magazines, it would be scaled down to fit pens, sticky notes and some other stationary items like paper pins and erasers. 

• Fusion 360 to create the design 

• LaserWork 6 for preparing the DXF file to be laser cut.

• Plywood sheet to execute the frame design

• Balsa wood rods

• M3 Screws & nuts

Based on the Isokon model that I was inspired from, I started scaling down the dimensions and calculating how much space I need for each compartment (sticky notes, penils, etc. Since it's a desk organiser, I had this silly idea of making it like an actual donkey... coming from the expression of 'He/She works like a donkey'. After, drawing the sketch on one side, I extruded the sketch and made sure to create a new compartment with each panel added so that edits can be easier and more organised. I also had to be careful about adding slots and tabs and account for the 3mm for material thickness and joints.

Most of the hard work was regarding creating the right types of joints accurately. The outer base of the model had x slots while the inner dividers and shelves had regular tabs and slots so the user can add and remove according to need. The back side had T slots (just to fulfill the task's requirement but I'd rather design the model without having to use any screws). 

Again, I repeated the process of creating sketches on the designated surfaces of each compartment with defined dimensions and in the process I showed and hid the bodies to make sure that the tabs and slots joined accurately. 

On the middle vertical divider in the model, I sketched a circle which would be the open slots for the connective rod to go through with a diameter of 6mm. After cutting through the panels by extrusion. I recreated the surface of the circle using the patch tool (which I knew previously from Rhinoceros 3D) and used the recreated surface to extrude the rod. In reality, The rod will not be fabricated using laser cutting or 3D printing but would be replaced by a ready made Balsa wood rod with diameter 6mm. I intend to add some fringes using threads at the back tip of the rod to represent a donkey's tail.

Now it was time to create the star of the show! I found a funny image of a donkey with shades on the internet and used Adobe Illustrator to trace it and clean its lines as a vector. I exported it as a DXF and opened it on Fusion 360 to save it in a separate file then scale it down until reached a dimension I was happy with. After some struggle with importing the donkey face into the main body file and putting in the right angle (45^), I decided to adjust it in its original file and rotating it before moving it to the main body again. I extruded certain parts of the sketch but intended to have the full sketch speed cut and scanned when implemented.

Last but not least, the legs, I sketched them on the plane of the outer body so that they're one piece. I also added holes in them with a diameter of 8mm as the same 6mm balse wood rods would go through them but at an 45^ angle so it had to be wider to compensate for the inclination. After checking that everything was in place and working, I used the project tool to export each face and made sure that they were labeled correctly. The only thing that was exported as a sketch was the Donkey face in its original file so as to include all the lines that were not extruded n the main body file.

I initially had every part in a seperate file so I had to combine them together in one. After downloading my file and placing my plywood sheet on the bed, I activating the framing action on the machine and realised that the sheet with the current nesting distribution was not suitable and the laser would cut componenets outside the sheet's area. So I had to revise the file and redistribute the components and make them closer to each other. With the help of my instructor, Farida, I was able to successfully nest them in an area and distribution that would fit my sheet. I revised the speeds and powers for each functions before starting laser cutting. After it was cut, I started connecting the slots and tabs, closing the T slots with screws and nuts as well as clipping rods and inserting them into the circulars slots at the base of the legs as well as the spine of the main body. I sanded the tip of the balsa wood with sand paper and inserted a screw then glued a thin magnet from an old broken hijab pin I had to the back side of the donkey face. This way, it is connected and also the donkey head can swing left and right by a small push!

• Rotating donkey in main file: I struggled to rotate the sketch once it was imported into the main body file and the only way I got around this was to adjust its angle in its original file then import it again.

• Project tool: Since I'm using my workplace laptop, I was unable to use the DXF for Laser plug-in as it required IT authorisation. I got around this problem by using the project tool on each face and even though it worked, it was time-consuming and resulted in overlapping lines which I simply deleted on Laser Work before downloading it to the machine.