Senior Year Semester 2 Blogs
Blog 4
3/15 - 4/2
Apparently Miller doesn't like the metal rack because it's "tacky"...so we aren't eve gonna use it. All that annoying hard work for nothing. Seriously, I cannot stress enough how annoying that shelf is. And now it's back outside doing the same thing it was before. But whatever it's fine just annoying.
Anyways, I helped Sophia cut out the environmental club stickers. Her, Sara and Malcolm have been working on them for a while, and I jumped on just to help with production. Sophia and I did the first half together, along with working out some technical printer difficulties, then I did the second half by myself. There are two different designs, as you can see on the left, and we made 50 of each. I had to fix the second one a bit since it wasn't good quality when it printed. I had to replace each picture on the Circut document with a different version of the design, and I finally got it to work. Mac and I dropped the sheets off at the lair for someone else to cut out.
I've also been working on making new work benches from scratch for the lab. They're a bit of a pain to make, but also kinda fun. Basically, I had to make, with Malcolm's help, 6 wooden frames from 2-by-4's, with one being for the top of the bench and the other for the bottom. Then, we took some other pieces of wood (I don't remember the dimensions) and screw them into the corners of the frames, with one frame on the bottom and the other suspended on top. Then, we have to cut out a piece of flat plywood for both the tabletop and also for the bottom frame for storage. Finally, we need to attach wheels to the bottom. So far, all the frames are made, and four of them (two each) are connected using the other pieces of wood. The plywood is measured and cut out for all three (with Miller's help), but only one has a tabletop and none of them have wheels. We were gonna put wheels on the one with a tabletop, however, we didn't have the right kind of screws for them, so we have to wait until we can get those screws. So far, they all look really good!
Finally, Mac and I put together a TV stand for Miller. With classes going back, he wanted a TY stand with a huge TV in order to see Zoom. It was fairly easy to put together. We had a problem at the end where we had to take some of it apart to fix, and the TV was really hard to position since it was so heavy and awkward, but other than that, it was pretty easy.
Blog 3
3/1 - 3/14
The logo is up! We finally got it done and mounted on the wall and it looks great! We also got the other one done too, but we are missing a couple rope pieces, so I need to laser cut a couple extra. Mac deep-cleaned the laser recently and it runs a lot better now, so using it shouldn't be a problem anymore. It did crack on the top left corner, which you can kinda see in the picture, but when you're not looking so closely at it, you can't really notice. I just held the piece in place while I re-screwed the screw in order to clamp it in place, and it worked well enough. I'm so glad it's finally done though, it took way too long.
I also fixed up the metal rack outside that usually just holds scrap and junk. Mac wants to use it to store the 3D printers inside, however, that required adjusting the shelves to specific heights in order to fit the printers and also some computers and filament. It was such a pain to do. The way it works is that the shelves have metal loops at each corner that slide down metal pipes. In order to keep the shelves in place, you put a rubber stopper on each pipe where you want the corner to stop, then you use a mallet to hammer it tight. The shelves were on so tight that it took way too much effort to loosen them. On top of that, the shelves are old, and the stoppers don't really work properly, meaning they slide down when they are hammered. So they are each wrapped in a bunch of old duck tape that Mac and I needed to cut away in order to fix them. Then, we had to re-wrap then duck tape in order to get the shelves to stay in place again, and sometimes, it still didn't work. It took a lot of adjustment and readjustment, but I finally got it done and in the lab. It looks a little out of place, but other than that, I think it'll work pretty well.
Blog 2
2/15 - 2/28
So I couldn't fix the screws on the belt rack. They had to be heated in order to be screwed in, so the stuck bits were really stuck in the acrylic. However, Mac decided to just glue the hinges onto the door instead, since it's a prototype and doesn't need to be perfect, along with painting the edge black to cover up the holes. Overall, it looks really nice. The one thing is though that it takes a lot of work to complete, along with material costs, so it's gonna be expensive. Mac was saying that he probably won't make anymore unless someone buys it first because of that, but he's not sure if anyone will, which sucks.
Something else that happened: we chemically locked two silkscreens! Yay...yeah. So we don't know exactly what happened, but Sara was making a screen for our t-shirts with our logo. The design got messed up on two screens though, so her, Mac and I tried to clean them. Basically, how you clean the screens is you spray emulsion stripper onto it, which is just a chemical that softens the emulsion since it can't be sprayed off with just water. However, you do have to spray off the emulsion stripper with water after a minute or two of letting it sit on the screen because if you let it dry, it makes it so that the emulsion is permanently on the screen, making it useless. That's what happened to these two screens. None of us remember doing anything specifically wrong, but somehow somewhere in the process, the screens managed to become chemically locked, meaning that we have to replace those two screens. Mac has on spare screen, so that's one less that we have to worry about, however, we have to completely replace the other one. That means removing the locked screen off of the wood frame and putting a new one on, which is a long, complicated and tedious process in it of itself.
We finally cut out our new logo for the wall in the lab. We were waiting on it for so long since we were originally going to CNC it, but no one wanted to use the CNC. Also, I think whoever was gonna make the Inkscape files never did, and the logo needed some modifying to make it laserable. But, it's mostly done now! We cut it out of both wood and blue acrylic in order to make two inlays, with one version being for the lab and the other being for the lair. The laser still isn't working properly, so Chloe and I had to hand-cut a lot of the parts in the wood, which took way too long. Then, we glued in each part to make the overlay. It wouldn't have been so painful if it weren't for us having to glue in each individual rope piece. Mac created the Inkscape file and decided to not make the rope one piece, but rather to have each little oval-strand thingy cut out individually. It's not on him though, considering I approved the design and thought nothing of it either. But, it's getting there. I'm probably gonna finish it next week.
I've also been helping install shelves into the CNC shed. They're not super pretty, but they work. The shed is a mess, and there's a bunch of CNC materials inside the lab that we should move out, so that's what they're there for.
Finally, I drew out some jewelry prototypes! I'm not sure when I'll actually make them since I need to figure out what I want to use and order the proper materials. I want to see if I can use purpleheart wood for them and a lavender acrylic as well. If you look at the picture on the left, the dark purple would be the wood, and the pink would be the acrylic, and the white spaces would just be holes. The bead would probably just be plastic from Michaels, or I could make it out of clay since I have a tool that can make beads in that shape. They would be necklaces and would be maybe 2 inches wide or a little less (the same size as my Gravity Water jewelry from sophomore year). I started out with the top left one, before realizing that the squares would be too small and it would take forever to assemble. So, I made the top right one with bigger squares and made it more symmetrical. I liked it, but just for fun, I copied it to the bottom right and made the corners rounded, and I ended up really liking it. I think that's probably the one I'll end up using.
Blog 1
2/1 - 2/14
A lot has happened recently! So, to start out, I've been working on Mac's belt rack prototype. He has to work on lab stuff, but he's designed all the parts, so I've been cutting them out whenever I go to the lab. The one problem is though that the laser is so bad right now. It doesn't cut all the way through the wood, so we have to either hand-cut some of the parts out or recut them by positioning the wood exactly how it was when it was first cut. We ended up going with the latter since the wood wouldn't budge when we tried hand-cutting it, and we got it to the point where we could hand-cut it without as many problems. Miller thinks we need to replace the CO2 canisters in it.
But, we finally got all the pieces cut, and Mac took them home to clearcoat. The pieces look really good, as you can see from the picture on the right (courtesy of Mac), and he was able to assemble it. However, the screws he was using for the acrylic door broke off and are now stuck inside the acrylic, which is a problem. I'm gonna see if I can fix it on Tuesday. I'm sure there's some way to fix it, and if not, it is just a prototype, so it should be fine either way.
Another thing I did was help Naomi out by heat-pressing her new design onto a test hat. It's a Kraken holding a broken ship made out of this pink-yellow iridescent vinyl, which is super pretty. There's a picture of it on the left (it's super shiny!). It turned out ok. The vinyl doesn't really stick really well to the hat, so we're gonna have to see how we can fix that. I also think Naomi is thinking about changing the colors, so we'll have to see how that works.