Original tutorials and reflection 2

Link of tutorial 2:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3-YxRMU_c12UnBBWHd3MDZUMkE

Original tutorials and reflection 1

Link of the tutorial 1:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3-YxRMU_c12a0VuQ0xJaThGOGM

Interdisciplinary Skin

Assignment 4 requires us to create an aluminium skin to adhere to the contours of another student's 3D template.

I'm doing Elijah's template of a glue bottle, who is from Architecture. http://zzhdigitalmaking.blogspot.com.au/

 

Elijah's work for last assignment.

To start my aluminium skin for the template is to cut the aluminium sheet into a suitable size.

Then trace the shape of the template onto the aluminium sheet.

Cut the sheet into the shape of the template. The red scissors is for right handed people.

The next step is to roll the sheet into a slightly curved shape and make it to fit to the template and the lower body of glue bottle.

 

After, make the shoulder of the template out. In this step, it's needed to hits to the sheet with care. Place the neck of the sheet onto the cuboid platform to push the end of the neck inside.

Always place the sheet back on the template to see how fit is it approaching and draw lines with a marker to see which part of the sheet needs to hit on.

 

Then I found that the top part of the template is gradually narrowing to a point. Then I drew the lines of the top layers of the template, and this would be where I'm going to hit to make the sheet to bend downward with a wedge-shape wood stick as a platform. In this step, it is advisable to hit the sheet layer by layer to get a better result.

 

The following step is to hit the top part of the skin on the slim curved metal strip to enable the sheet to wrap the template. And also hit the corner of the skin shoulder and the two sides of the skin at the end of the metal strip to fit to the template.

These are my final result of the skin.

 

Reflection

I suggest that it's necessary to hit the neck and top of the skin layer by layer, bit by bit to get the result of narrowing and wrapping down as a bottle cap. And the body of the skin also needs to bend down slightly from the central line to the sides.

In this assignment, I found that to make a better-matched skin for the template, you always need to be patient and hit the aluminium sheet gently bits by bits. Otherwise, in some cases, the edge of the sheet would start to tear and then the more you hit, the more it will tear. Or, the aluminium sheet would get over-hit, and it will be hard to get back the previous shape.

The Aluminum Skin

It's a challenging work to make a shape with the original sheet, it always needed to have a few experimental attempts towards the final product.

The first thing to start with is to cut the original sheet to the size of the model. The left side of the picture above is the first attempt that I did for the skin. The sheet is too big for the size of the model. And it will take extra time because there are some unnecessary parts of the sheet but I still need to hit on to make the whole shape right.

 

This is my second attempt. I've learnt that it's important to know where you are going to hit on the sheet, so always draw a line on the aluminum sheet that traces the curve on the model. And also find an appropriate and handy tool which is suitable to make the shape to work with.

Russell suggested me to cut the whole sheet that I work on into half which would be better and easier in order to make a skin that could fit on the model.

 

The red scissor is for right-handed people. I've then cut the sheet into two and made a bottom sheet. I decided to work with the top one on the right hand side photo above.

Tip: Wear gloves. The edges of the sheet would be rough after cutting that would easily hurt your hands.

 

Always place the sheet on model to see how far I went to make the skin.

Tip: Always bring a UHU with you. The stack slices model will always break into two when you try to squash it into the aluminum skin to see how it fits.

  

This is a useful tool that supervisor recommend as a base to hit on. Place the curved face into the hollow part of the base which would make a nice curve. 

The next step after created a curved skin is to hit the two narrow ends downward but remain the middle part arching. In this process, it needs to hit the sheet bit by bit horizontally from the middle to the ends with the use of the duck-bill shape hammer above.

 

Supervisor welded the model for me as the intention to get an even skin, then the result turned to the other way as it's over welded. The aluminum sheet became hard and the the shape was fixed. Then a new skin needed to be done.

 

Finally, the aluminum skin is done with repeating the steps above. It's fitted with the model by following all its curved lines and narrow ends.

Making the structure for the Aluminum skin

 

After the laser cut machine finishes its work, it's important to use the masking tape to tape all the parts on the original board, otherwise the small parts will fall off once it has been cut out.





 It's the right way to stick the bigger number piece on the top of it's previous one. And some of the pieces would have the bottom shape of the following piece drew on, so just glue the following piece to the line on the previous one.

This is my finished structure for the aluminum skin.

Digital Modelling

The first step for the modelling is to create a 123D Catch model. It's quite convenient to download the 123D Catch app on iPhone. 

My first attempt is modelling the flower. There were some holes on the model, and the leaf is adhesive to the base.

 

Then I imported the 123D model into the Meshmixer.

After experimented by Auto Repair and manually filling the holes, it was a failure to fill all the holes on the flower.

Therefore, I've changed from the flower to the bud.

It came out with a successful model captured on the 123D Catch, no holes, no attachments.

 

Next, I've imported it into Meshmixer again, to remove the background and the base shot with the lily bud. And then select the bottom of the stem and fill it. Finally, save the file into stl format, so it could be imported into the 123D Make to make the structure for the aluminum skin.

The following step is to import the stl file into 123D Make. 

 Adjust the unit from inch to mm, then consider the actual size into the real model. My lily bud structure is 184mm H * 203mm W * 129mm L.  

The construction technique that I chose is Stacked Slices. Which would allow the details of the bud to appeal on the model. And I chose the 2mm thick board to cut out the model.

Then save the cutting plan into dxf format and import it into illustrator to change the colour of the numbers into blue and the colour of the outer lines into red which tells the laser cut machine to cut.

My OBJECT

My chosen object is lily. The reason for choosing lily is because that as designing an interior space, the smell of the space is also an essential element in order to create an ambience. And lily is my favourite flower. So I thought I can go for it.