Week 3# - Journal

This week’s assignment was to design a penholder using at least two of the 3D design features like ( revolve – sweep – extrude- loft) . this part was quite challenging for me because most of the designs I found, I could only use one feature and use other altering features that changes the outer design/shape but not a design that required both features from the get go. later on, I got the idea to design a cartoon face using one feature and design a base using another feature. my design is inspired by minion character in movie despicable me. I liked the design because I could integrate many features to reach the facial expressions easily and It would also be a nice decorative piece on my desk.

We used fusion but this week we learned how to design 3D objects using features from bar solid , we covered most of those features through this week’s exercises .

the mechanism of each feature is quite easy but I would say it’s about how you integrate and use the features to obtain the desired design

for example ,

- extrude (E) is used if you want to expand / pull a surface outward or you could use it to cut the surface selected from a solid object .

- revolve is used to circulate a surface through a selected axis.

- Loft is used to create an object from two surfaces on different planes

- Planes on different surfaces are created by selecting offset plane , you can select a surface from your object then you can choose any plane and the distance of that plane from the origin , offset planes is also used to split your object into separate pieces

- Shell removes the material from inside the object and you determine the remaining distance you want to be left.

- To edit the sharp edges from the objects you can choose loft and changes the radius of the curvature you want

To implement my design on cura

- I first saved the file as stl by first combining the bodies and click on new component .

- Right click on the new component and choose save as stl

Adjusting the design on cura

- The first thing I altered was the scale of the object from the left bar or by selecting the object and short cut (s) and choosing uniform scale

- then I changed profile ( layer height) to 0.2 and infill to 20%

- the best orientation to print the object was having it standing

- I deselected adhesion because my design has a wide base so it won’t need brim.

- For the supports I chose supports touching blade and selected supports

- I clicked slice to know the time and grams needed for fabrication and to adjust the design to have the time and grams within the limited range

- To start the fabrication I saved the file as .gcode

some mistakes that could benefit someone else

- You cant’t use shell if you had used fillet before so to fix it you can right click on the feature fillet and select supress feature , and shell the object , then unsupress the feature

- I also didn’t know how to add png to an object on fusion , but my instructor told us to click on insert and choose decal then select the png

The fidget and the lego were very time consuming but an enjoyable process nonetheless , I enjoyed the movement of the fidget from different into different motions , also the Lego was nice to build up and add the facial features to it .