Weekly Reflection 3

Compared to other two weeks, this week was the most successful one. I was able to freely express my ideas and successfully create the things that I wanted. The prototypes clearly showed the design flaws that I can change to make a better project, and meanwhile I learned several different functions of Fusion 360 that can be used appropriately. I also created small and simple projects for the students in Proctor for their personal use or classes. All these activities were satisfying. I was relieved that I had physically printed models that can be shown for the presentation that shows my effort. Of course, not everything went very successfully as anything else. Every project was changed at least five times and each of them required a major change in multiple aspects. When I am pondering on how I should change my project, it may seem like I am doing absolutely nothing, but I actually simulate the changes numerous times before I make a change in the project to seek for the best possible outcome. On the other hand, I still wasn’t completely satisfied with the final products because of the design. Currently, all I can do is filleting the edges to look rounder and more refined. When I see other models online that has been downloaded multiple times, I can see why their projects are so popular. The overall quality exceeds that of my projects, but such thing cannot be overcome simply by looking at others’ designs. At the end, I felt achieved on printing out the three versions of phone stands and two versions of the battery box. Whether people would download it or not, I believe they can be used usefully to people. 

May 20th

Since I finished the triple A battery box, I copied the file to create a double A battery dispenser. I widened the box and also modified the lids.

The rest of the day was spent printing out the iphone 6 plus and iphone 6 version of the phone stand. The charger hole was too small for the chargers to pass through, so I had to expand the bottom surface and the hole. I also enlarged the stand to stabilize it.

 The rest of the day was spent watching the projects being printed out to see if there is any problem with the print. 

May 19th

After modifying the phone stand, I chose to create a better version of the battery dispenser. The prototype was terrible. The hinges were too weak and wasn't printed the way I wanted. This included both the design flaw and 3D printer problem. Now that the tech center have a better filament and I have enough time to work on the next project, I chose to work on the older projects to finalize them. I increased the radius of the cylinders that were holding the lid. I also had to make the lids smaller so that the printer doesn't recognize it as the same body as the box itself. The second model's problem was that the top lid created too much supports inside that I couldn't get rid of all the supports, and it was too dirty inside. Thus, I rotated the top lid by 90 degrees. The result was satisfying. Everything worked the way I wanted.

May 18th

  Designing the stand was relatively easier. It just had to be stable enough to withstand the weight of the phone. However, modelling was harder than I thought. I had to sketch each sides and pull those surfaces out to construct the entire model one by one. The problem was that in order to create a stand that gets constantly narrower, I can't just pull out from one sketch because I couldn't adjust the points of the extruded model. I looked at the modify tools of Fusion and learned how to use draft for this model. Draft solved this issue easily. All I had to do is choose the surface that is contacting the surface that I wanted to adjust, then choose the surface that I want to tilt. This way, I created a sketch sideways, pulled out the model from the sketch and narrowed the surface from back to front easily. However, the prototype didn't fit because I chose the exact size of the hole that was mentioned in the holder. Thus, I decreased the contacting side.

May 17th

The prototype had couple problems. The phone didn't fit the holder because I used the exact dimensions from the website. I didn't consider the expansion in filaments and small error among the dimensions. I enlarged the holder and the slot that contacts with the stand. Since the slot was too small and long, I was worried the contacting surface would break easily and won't be stable enough. Also, I filleted the surround arms because the phone's bottom surface is round and sharp edges from the holder can damage the phone. Round surfaces looked much better the sharp edges. I printed out the new model and everything fit perfectly.
 

May 16th

  The motivation for the new project came from using the phone in the bed. Since I had to hold my phone above my head while lying down on the bed, my arms hurt from doing so. At first I wanted to create a phone bed stand, but soon realized that it is easier to make a regular phone stand first, then think about making one that also works for the bed. As the thoughts proceeded, I chose to make a design that can be rotated without using a particular mechanism. I also wanted a stand that is simple and effective. The idea was to make a stand that holds the phone and stand at the same time. However, if it can be rotated sideways, the stand and phone holder has to be separated. The result was .

 The phone holder can hold the phone and has a slot at the back so that it can be connected with the stand separately. In the afternoon, I printed out the prototype to see if there is any design flaw.

Weekly Reflection 2

   As soon as I changed my thoughts in my potential 3D-printing projects, my life has been simpler in reaching the objective. I was able to create plans for useful things such as wire organizer, phone stand and battery box. Coming up with the idea of making these objects was easy because they already exist in the internet that I didn't come up with a completely new idea. However, making these were difficult because even though I had a great idea in making these objects before modeling, sometimes it didn't work out at all and sometimes it was out of my ability to finalize the project. Normally it would take multiple hours of fixes in the model for me to realize that I cannot proceed, so some of the projects like switch key. These projects took up about half of the time. On the other hand, I have battery box and wire organizer that was successful after going through multiple versions. Overall process was enjoyable and I learned multiple lessons. I learned why there are designers and engineers in the company and why engineers always have to take some design class in college. Also, the project cannot be finalized in one step. It normally requires numerous changes and dedication to produce a solid result. After all, I definitely achieved more than last year.