Metals Exercises

In my Materials Precision and CIM (TEL 205) course (affectionately referred to as "Metals" by most students), I created several different artifacts. I am directly cross listing these under the creative section of this portfolio, as while they were intended to be experiential exercises, part of each exercise involved the creation of a design brief and some iterations of ideation. The artifacts are listed below by the main metal working skill exercised by each project.

For this course I used Fusion 360 a great deal and have linked to models and drawings throughout this page. You should be able to view them in-browser by following a link, or if you choose to download and install Fusion to your computer (it is a fairly light program) you should be able to view them there. (You may need to make an account, but that is free and, at least at the time of the creation of this portfolio, Fusion is free for education and for small businesses.)

The following artifacts are listed on this page:

Sheet Metal Side Table
Mild Steel Forged/Welded Bookends
Cast Aluminum Spoon Rest
CNC/Manually Turned Salt and Pepper Shakers

Sheet Metal

(Side Table)

The primary requirement of this project was to create an artifact using sheet metal. The idea for the table is not original, I would link to it, but the original link to the product seems to be gone! I tweeted at the company who produced it originally though, and that tweet is right here.

I created the pattern for the project using Fusion 360's sheet metal environment. The model itself is here and the drawing is here. I created the rendering to the top-right using Fusion as well.

The final artifact is made from three separate pieces of #18 sheet metal, was spot welded at its joints, and was primed and finished with spray paint. It also has non-skid rubber pads as feet.

(You may notice a bit of a "lean" in the finished artifact—this was due to a slightly misplaced bend that propagated through the piece.)

Mild Steel

(Forged/Welded Bookends)

For this project we needed to create an artifact using mild steel.

The top image to the left was again rendered using Fusion 360, where I modeled the design initially. You can find the model here and the drawings here.

The figure on the bookend was formed from 1/4" steel square-stock in a gas forge and then MIG welded together onto two pieces of 1/4" mild steel. The 1/4" stock was cut with both a plasma cutter and an abrasive cutoff wheel, so as to have an experience with both methods of cutting. After grinding off parts of the welds, The bookends were ultimately bead-blasted, primed and spray painted.

Due to time constraints, I was only able to forge one figure.

Cast Aluminum

(Spoon Rest)

For this project we had to cast an artifact out of aluminum using a sand casting technique. I chose to create a spoon rest for use in a kitchen setting.

To create the sand mold, I first modeled the spoon rest using Fusion 360 (see the model here and the drawing here) and then 3D printed a positive. I used a combination of sanding and acetone to smooth the surface of the mold to ensure a good surface finish of the final artifact. You may follow the progress here on my Twitter. (For more info on my experiences with social media see my comments here.)

You may notice that the final artifact to the right does not have a long handle as shown in the rendering and the other photo. This is because this particular casting had the best surface finish of all of the castings made. (I re-cast the rest several times due to a number of different issues.)

CNC/Hand Lathe

(Salt/Pepper Shakers)

We were also expected to create some artifacts using the hand lathe and some sort of CNC machine. These salt and pepper shakers were created using the HAAS CNC Lathe as well as the manual lathe.

I created the rendering to the left using Fusion 360, and used Fusion to create the tool paths for the mill as well. You can find the model here and the drawings here.

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