Mary Effler: Waffle Project (The Treble Snail)

So I had a really, really hard time coming up with any sort of idea for this project. I tried several ideas, and Ed would remind me sometimes that it didn't quite fit what the assignment was asking for. One of the ideas I had was to make something like those office desk toys, like a jungle gym made from the waffle pattern with magnetic people you could have doing things on it, but it didn't seem like it fit the requests for this assignment. So I sat down and started sketching out shapes that I liked:

And in the end, I went with the treble clef, since it's always been a shape I love (I do sing soprano, after all). I used Blender to make a model of it, though after trying to model the violin scroll for my serial slicing project, I'd learned how hard it was to accurately model that type of scroll pattern. Plus, with space between the pieces, the waffle wouldn't look so good. So I used the rotating tools instead to make the pattern on the sides. In the end, I kinda thought it looked like a snail or something, hence the name:

Perspective view

Front view

Side view

To do the waffling, I tried using the scripts and Rhino to do it, but I couldn't get them to work for some reason, and a lot of others seemed to be having trouble as well. But Ed Whetstone pointed me to a program from Autodesk called 123D Make, which will handle waffles, serial slicing, and several other means of making slices from models for 3D projects. So I figured I'd give that a shot, and it's actually a neat program (it's also free). Here's the workflow I went through for it:

This is the basic interface you enter, with the model you imported in the center.
You can see the workflow and options on the left side.

The next step is to choose your method of construction. I went with the "interlocking
slices" option, which produces the waffles. It will give you a default output which you can add to and
customize within the program. You can also always see the slice layout on the right. The coloured pieces mean
there could be a problem with those slices. Red indicates structural issues, and blue indicates
an orphaned piece.

Here I've added more slices, and rotated them a bit to get a style I wanted. There's still some
structural concerns though.

The one piece left in the center is a concern, but it's necessary to connect the front and back together.
It's nothing that some Loctite shouldn't fix when I construct it.

You can have the program give you a rendering in different materials,
like cardboard, plywood, and plastic.

You can view the final slice layout, make sure everything looks allright, then save it out for use
in a different program. You can also export the mesh itself as an obj or stl file.

After that I took the files into Rhino and cleaned them up. Several corners were a bit choppy from the rotating tool, so I removed some of the sharp, strange points and made them straight lines. I also got rid of some pieces that were incredibly small and didn't add to the overall shape:

The file has been sent to the printer, but due to the backlog it isn't done yet. I'll post pictures when it's completed. Till then, here's the keyshot renderings of the mesh. I went with black plastic, as this is the type of texture and colour I always associate with music notes and scales.

Mary Effler: Polyhedra Project

I used to love making little paper craft toys as a kid, and for a while at work lately, my coworkers and I would print out a lot from http://www.papercraftmuseum.com/ and put them up around work. So this project was pretty fun for me to do. I started out with the low pentagrammic pyramid model: 

I had originally made some designs on it after moving it into Illustrator and prepping it for laser printing, but since the engraving layers and the like aren't being printed right now, those didnt make it to the final model:

I put together the printed form with Loctite, after using my little multitool knife to make some of the folds and perforations easier to fold:  

Since I didn't have the added in cut outs and the like, I was wondering how best to go about decorating it before Monday. As I mentioned in my drum model though, I really like the idea of art where other people are encouraged to pick it up and mess with it, rather than just observing it. So I took it to a coffee shop I frequent near my house, called Cafe Bohemia. The owner is an artist herself, and loves leaving various art supplies around for people to play with. They first took some spray paint to it, where we just left it for a day next to a bunch of paint and told people to go nuts. Then we left it next to a black sharpie, and 10 people decorated a side. Here's the finished result:

Ed Whetstone and Mary Effler: Project 8, Pepakura (Robot Pawn)

This post has all content for Assignment 8, Pepakura (Robopawn)
See all updates below the fold!

Mary Effler - Assignment 6 - Lamp

I started on this project before I've designed my waffle project because honestly, I'm having a really hard time finding inspiration for a waffle design. I'm not very good with just random abstract shapes, but it's difficult for me to think of a design that would work well with the waffle structure.
At first I was drawing up some designs for a Deep Space Nine based lamp, but I wasn't liking my attempted designs, and also, the light I would up getting from Home Depot isn't a hanging light, so it wouldn't have worked with the light I was able to get from there.

The light I would up getting is a little battery-powered puck light:

So after struggling with that for a while, I finally changed the idea and wanted to make a more basic design, since the whole point of a lamp is letting light though, and in this case, letting light through in an interesting pattern or shape. I was thinking of some of the children's lamps you normally see:


I started off with a basic cylindrical shape, since that would accommodate the light I have a little better. After drawing several classier looking designs and not really liking many of them, I thought back to the children's designs, and tried to think of a more fun one that could be played with and made into different shapes once sliced. So I kept things simple and modeled a piece of candy with a wrapper on it:

Front view

Side view

For the waffling process, I don't have a lot of time between jobs and everything to always come into the ATEC labs, but a friend of mine showed me an Autodesk software called 123D Make, which will take 3D models and serial slice, waffle, and otherwise format them for laser cutting. So I threw the model into that program, and played with how many slices I wanted, where I wanted them to line up, etc. To see a more detailed process of the workflow in 123D Make, check out my posting on the waffle project, as that has more pictures showing the full process. 

Here's my final layout for the slices. Red slices do mean there could be structural concerns, but looking at the design, using some Loctite should fix and hold the areas that need to be kept together, so it won't be a problem in the end.

Then here's a rendering of what it will look like in cardboard when done.

I wanted to add a couple more elements, and make a space in the center of it for the puck light to sit. So I took the slices into Adobe Illustrator and cut out a rounded rectangle in the 3 middle pieces, then on the outside two pieces, added a random dot and star pattern so the light could cast interesting shapes, ala the childrens' lamps from above. After that I put the pieces into Rhino, and made sure the inner cuts lined up okay for the light, and that everything was ready to print:  

 

I've submitted the file for printing, but due to the backlog it's not quite ready yet. I'll be sure to post here when the design is finished. Until there, here are some keyshot renderings of it. I made it out of a blue plastic, as the style is reminiscent to me of Ikea lamps: somewhat cheap looking, but still classy. The keyshot renderings don't show the detail from the AI files either.