Caotan Pham: Pepakura Geometric Unfolding

I decided to make a desktop because almost every aspect of our lives revolves around this piece of equipment. It is such an intricate part of daily life, if it was removed from reality this instant, several sides of our first world society would come to a standstill. Also, the redundancy of designing a computer on a computer seemed fitting somehow.

The entire model consists of three parts: the monitor, the keyboard, and the cpu. After designing all three, I moved them into Pepakura to be unfolded.

I then took it into Illustrator and exported into Rhino to manually fix up the lines and tabs. The neck of the monitor split in a weird position in Pepakura, so I redrew the parts. Additionally, the tabs connecting the neck and the base seemed too small and excessive, so I combined them into larger tabs.

I moved them back into Illustrator for final adjustments and exporting. The desktop still looked like a box at this point, so I drew in a power button and disk drives.

The keyboard, though slightly more trapezoidal, was the same, so I added in cuts to imitate keys. For the sake of cutting time, I decided not to engrave a grid into the top, and instead cut small crosses.

Here they are after the laser. I cut them onto mounting board, which is similar to cardboard, but without the corrugated paper in the middle. Unfortunately, this material did not cut as well, because higher strengths began to burn the paper, instead of cutting through. This meant that I had to go through and, with a knife, cut the parts which the laser could not cut through.

Here the monitor is having its final tabs glued shut. I used painter's tape to hold the edges together. For the monitor, I messed up and built the whole base and neck parts individually and then attempted to fit the neck inside after they had dried, instead of assembling the neck, and then building the base and screen around it. That was a lesson learned.

Here is the finished keyboard. You may be able to see the slight trapezoidal form. Also, while assembling, I noticed that the burn marks on the cardboard were meant to be on the inside, with dashed lines being valley folds, and dotted dashed lines being mountain folds, but I wanted the marks on the outside, so I reversed the folds.

Here is the cpu. It's size proved to be a challenge for the tabs to keep together while the glue dried. The drive cutouts and the power button turned out great.

Here is the monitor. It looked balanced in the 3d model, but as I was assembling it, I was worried it wouldn't stand up. It did, however. The neck holds up fine, and it doesn't tip, which is good.

Here are all three pieces together. It looks a lot more like the real thing than expected. This project was fun, and became some sort of a tribute to my computer habits. Bringing something digital, breaking it down, and bringing it into the physical realm was a good experience.

Caotan Pham: Laser Cut Box

I have a cat at home that sleeps in a small bed at the end of my desk. Sometimes, when she is careless, she will slide the bed in her sleep and it will tip over the side. She may not be as social as a dog, but she is a constant companion nonetheless, and I decided to make a box to prevent her sliding around.

I chose a 12x6x3 inch box from boxmaker.

Here is the finished design in Illustrator. I made a kitten, a cat, a ball of yarn, and a mouse to put onto the sides. I also cut out a large portion of the lid, because even though the notches look good, I thought that my cat may be annoyed by the feel of it, so I opted for the lid, while keeping the open top idea. The bottom has several strips cut out to allow for airflow to prevent moisture from possibly getting trapped under the bed, preventing mold and other growth.

Here are two walls getting glued together. I made this out of the same material as the smash plaque: 2.7mm hardwood plywood.

She let me keep the cutout parts.

Here is the finished product. The burnt edges give it a rustic look, and even the thin tails of the cats, mice, and yarn came out nicely. Assembly went mostly as planned, except that one side I could not fit the burned part facing out. All the other sides, including the top and bottom, could, but not that one side. This is why the long sides have the same shape if you look through them.

Unfortunately, I measured improperly, and the box is too small for her bed. Alternate uses for this box can be for new kittens. The box can be lined with blankets for the kitten to feel warm and secure, and will stay dry because of the slots on the bottom.

Caotan Pham: Laser Engrave

Super Smash Brothers is a Nintendo fighting game that brings in many different characters from many different series to duke it out. It is the game that my friends and I play together the most, and the game that represents our friendship the best. Therefore, I picked the logo to be engraved into wood.
The symbol replacing the "o" in "bros." is the symbol representing the fighting game, which I have reproduced.

The entire thing was drawn in Illustrator. The symbol itself was the easiest, simply creating a circle and subtracting two lines creates the shape. The fire was harder, but it was based from a larger circle, with shapes that were pulled from it, and modified to look like a fireball. The Smash Bros. symbol was then placed on top. The wisps of flame were also simple drawn paths. To add more detail, an outline was traced around the outside of the main fireball. Partial outlines were also drawn on the wisps, resized, and subtracted, to give a lighter feel to them. The levels of black were adjusted for raster depth, and exported into .eps format for the off campus shop I went to.

This is the final product. It was cut into 2.77mm hardwood plywood, which was cheaper than expected, and still relatively soft. It turned out pretty well, and smells like campfire. In hindsight, I should have cut the background into more of a plaque shape, but that is for future consideration.

Here is a closeup of the product. Here you can see the various details of how it was cut. If you look closely, you can see that the laser does not have a steady beam dragging across the board, but instead, it shoots thousands of concentrated beams, with varying strength, to give different depths.

Caotan Pham: Week 2 Duck

A duck is a bird, and birds have wings, so I made my duck with wings made from a boolean fusion of several ellipsoids, and a little shaping.
This model was built using point editing, and shape splitting.
The body and wings are made of a soft yellow plastic, and the beak is made from a harder orange plastic. The eyes are glass beads, with no irises.

Caotan Pham: Week 2 Flashlight

This flashlight was based off one I have in my possession, with a wide handle, and tipped ends to aid with impact.
Only three shapes were used: ellipsoids, tapered cones, and cylinders. Both boolean additions and subtracts were heavily used to create a hollow space inside the body and the tips.
The lens is made of glass, and the switch on the back end is made of rubber, emulating the real thing. The body is composed of a dark colored, smooth metal with high shine.
The lighting was chosen to show off the gloss of the body, as well as the reflection from the floor.

Caotan Pham: Week 1 Castle

Though it isn't obvious from the renders, this castle is based off the concept of a castle on a floating island.
Only primitive shapes were used and were positioned with array rotations and cloning tools.
Because it is a castle, outdoor materials were chosen. The "floating island" base is a dark and rough stone, and the secondary towers are made of white marble. The main tower and walls are made of brick which looked strange until the samples option was modified. The extra structures are made of wood because they are supposed to be easily repaired or rebuilt.
The lighting was chosen to be a little weak to reduce the glare from the shine of the marble.