Toys making Toys: V3 What do people really need?

That's a question that I struggle with very frequently because I feel like the answer is typically... nothing. Out of the numerous purchases that we make in a year I feel like the majority of those are wants rather than need.

I have no real answer to this dilemma, it just seems to be a recurring struggle.

But I have an approach where I am trying to remedy two problems with one solution. Here are the problems.

The first is... people need to eat, and I figure that they will want to eat with some utensils that they enjoy. There's that "want" issue again.

The second is... I work in the same building as the furniture department. Often there are some great blocks of quality and exotic woods that are too small to be used as furniture.

My solution was to make chop sticks. It's a simple shape, I could play around with some modeling softwares that I have been learning and have something nice to each lunch with during the upcoming quarter.

I modeled a few iterations of some chopsticks and cut the pieces of wood down to a consistent size.

I took the wood dimensions and then the toughest part began. I needed to be perfectly in the middle and with 4 different styles I had a lot of nudging to do. The cross members are there so the sticks won't fall out when the opposite side is cut. I needed side A and side B to coincide and if I was a 1/16 off in the real world or in the digital world the output wouldn't look right.

So I got one size squared up but I still needed some way to lock this thing into place. At this point I took a note from Eric Schimelpfenig. There is a pipe factory video where he used an offset wheel to lock and unlock a piece of material. That worked really well for securing my wooden blocks down.

Beyond that it was a matter of getting the pieces machined out- flipping them over- machining the mirror- and starting the next one. Turns out that using that region to reduce the cutting width paid off. It helped me keep the same height as I flipped them over.

That's where I am at the moment. I made 8 pairs and I need to gettem' sanded down, finished, and food ready. More to come soon.

I finished up all of the sticks. I detached them from the cut out, sanded them down, and applied mineral oil. Its not as glossy as I would like but I don't think eating polyurethane is the best of alternative either.

I also realized that I would like to see how these would look in a store setting so just for funs...

The gist of the graphic states that the entire process from starting to model until I got the prototype off the machine took 1:45 minutes. Now what do I have to do to get more Handibots in my students' hands?

Toys making toys: V2 a demo for all

I have been talking with a furniture professor for a while about getting these machines for both departments and I figure the more eyes we can get on the machine the better. So I rounded up approximately 30 students and explained how the machine works and what possibilities this machine can give a enthusiastic student.

I did a basic roughing pass on what looks like an upside down bar of soap. Its not all that interesting but I will still show the video. I emphasized that once you know how to make your 3D designs "talk" to the machine your ability to get feedback is ridiculously fast. Within the hour instead of waiting for the cue for the 3d printers. - I apologize for the video quality

I know how to pitch the HandiBot to the ID students but I want the furniture students to understand how it can increase their joinery options. So I demonstrated how to do a "fat finger" joint. I photographed a series to show how to pieces might migrate together.

The best question I got all afternoon was ... if we get these machines, who is going to teach us how to write tool paths? I calmly responded in saying, "Me".

Toys making toys - V.1 Jellyfish

I was fortunate enough to become friends with Bill Young. He works for Shopbot and after a few conversations we realized that we had a common interest... CNC fabrication.  So Bill put me with a SCAD alumni, Jeanne who graciously allowed me to see how I chould fit the Handibot into my classes. This is a rough documentation of the process. 

I had a weird class load this quarter. I was teaching computer modeling to both Industrial Design students and Jewelry students. I wanted to create an example of how students could use a well known ID fabrication technique and modify it in such a way that our jewelry designers could create complex forms in a fraction of the time.

Because summer was coming up I wanted to make something the everyone in Savannah would be familiar with. A jellyfish

So vacuum forming- we use it a bunch and its pretty straight forward. Or we could take a matched die forming process. The first thing I needed to do was make the matching molds.

I made the tool paths using RhinoCAM- took a bit to locate the post processor for the Handibot but when I did it worked perfectly the first time. It was also really nice to double check how the piece would cut before I went ahead and actually did it.

I didn't want to spend all day for the Handibot to cut out everything so I got it to do a roughing pass and a parallel finishing pass within a region. I marked it out and took off the excess with a sawsall.

So we are now ready to go. I ran into a bit of a problem when I was getting ready to start. It is true that the machine has an 6 x 8 cutting bed but the height of my item kept on running into the carriage. It would be nice it the front part of the carriage ( the part that my index finger is touching) would arc out a bit. Giving me a little more room and retaining structural integrity.  Anywho,  I chamfered the edges and it did the trick.

After about 30 minutes of cutting I realized that I was in a fog of MDF dust. Now I'm a big fan of MDF. I feel that it is the sausage of the wood world and  hickory smoked sausage is just delicious. However, I needed to make some changes fast.

Step One: Cover computer with the nearest cooler. Check

Step Two: Cover or shroud the machine with a tarp to keep dust from covering everything. Check

The parallel finishing pass went much faster and with much less MDF dust.

So on to the other side of the mold. I chose to go with a 24 gauge piece of copper as part to be formed. I gave the two shapes ( the concave and the convex shape) a .02 offset to allow for the material thickness. This half was a lot easier than the previous.

This is where my expertise ends and where my leaning in Jewelry begins. I was thinking that we could fasten the edges of the metal down, put the wood and metal sandwich in a hydraulic press and just go for it. Not exactly how it works. My students annealed the piece then we started to press. 

To my suprise we went back and forth many times. Heat then press, heat then press. It wasnt part of the plan but we got wrinkles along the edges. I suppose I prefer wrinkles rather than tears.

There was some creaking as we pressed further I think it was more the compression of the MDF rather than the stretching of the metal. Thus we had to get the metal unstuck each time. 

We would press, remove the metal, flatten out the wrinkles, anneal and repeat. And this is what we got. 

In hind sight. This is what I should had done, it's a learning process.

so next time I'll just make one of these

Now that I have the basic shape. I am venturing into uncharted territory... machining metal

I went back into RhinoCAM and programmed it to run a pocketing pass on the offset surface ( taking into account the thickness of the metal).

This time I screwed down the metal to the mold so it wouldn't dance on me. I set the origin, slowed the router down and we went. 

So here is our Finished Jellyfish.