prototype – FLC Innovation

16Apr 2019

Students Making Things

Unsurprisingly, there’s been a lot of making in the makerspace lately. For instance, Sydney (student and Makerspace Facilitator) is working on this magnificent costume helmet.

It lights up. N’omi (student) has been manufacturing these custom cutting boards…

…and we freed the mycelium chimp face from it’s mold…

Meanwhile Sophie (student and Makerspace Facilitator) has been designing and producing these custom patterned rolling pins.

Meanwhile, Nicole (student and Makerspace Facilitator) has been directing the efforts of a skillful group of student interns as they continue with a large-scale, interactive periodic table that will be mounted in on of the large lecture halls on campus.

The lit up the latest prototype yesterday – it’s controlled by an Android app – and if this latest prototype is any indication, this project is going to be amazing!

21Feb 2019

Mushroom Planting Pot v1.0

by Zack ⋅ 1 Comment

Today we got a look at the first prototypes of our mycelium-based 4″ planting pot project. Here’s how they looked, still in the forms.

The “good” one – the one where the 3D printed PLA positive didn’t deform during the vacuum forming process – is really solid and feels done.

The second one didn’t want to release from the form, which was not surprising, given how much deformation occurred during thermoformer’s heating cycle, so I had to cut it free from the pot, and use few paper clips to keep the top section attached to the more substantial base.

Into the dehydrator at 100 degrees Fahrenheit for about three hours, and we’ll see how they feel after that.

For this iteration, we used oat hay as the substrate, into which we mixed rye berries inoculated with King Oyster mushroom spawn. Since we set up v1, we’ve received a food processor, in order that we might more finely chop up the substrate, and we also have some other substrates in the shop, including rice hulls and various wood chips. V2 next!

12Feb 2019

Practical Making – Fixing a Broken Clock

by Zack ⋅ Leave a Comment

A member of the community contacted me recently about the possibility of helping to repair a broken clock gear. We’ve got an Omax ProtoMAX in the shop, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to use it for a compelling project. Steve sent me a photo of the broken piece, and I pointed him in the direction of geargenerator.com, a free online tool created by @AbelVincze that enables the creation of sophisticated gears, and will allow you to export your creations in DXF format.

Steve did a lot of good work design work, and we traded files back and forth until I felt we were ready to cut a few prototypes for fit.

We spent some time in the lab measuring the gear and tweaking the file, adding the two auxiliary holes and the cutouts for the index tabs by hand in Illustrator…

…after which we cut a couple of prototypes, first in wood to A/B with the original, and then in acrylic, which Steve took home to check for fit.

The final acrylic prototype fit so well, in fact, that part of the brittle acrylic broke when Steve tried removing it. Success!

Steve then sourced some brass plate, and we were now ready to engage Hayes (student, makerspace employee, and ProtoMAX expert) to prepare the file for use with the waterjet to cut the final version. Steve and Hayes were able to cut a very close likeness of the original broken gear.

Steve took it home, installed it, and reports that the clock is working perfectly!

10Aug 2018

Puzzle Prototyping

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Victoire (Communication and Media Studies) dropped by the lab today, and shared an idea she had about creating a puzzle as part of her Group Communications class in the fall. She brought with her a piece of paper with the “Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody” story on it, and talked about turning it into a puzzle. We quickly got to prototyping, first on paper, kicking around ideas about the sizes of the words, the individual pieces, and the puzzle overall. We fired up Illustrator to create version 1, which we laser cut on 1/8″ hobby plywood.

We immediately agreed that the pieces were too small, the words not legible enough. Back to the drawing board, where we more or less quadrupled the size of the pieces, and changed the letters from vector outlines to raster engraves.

This version felt more or less right, and then I remembered a project Jeremy (Making Social Change student) had done maybe a year ago, spray painting plywood and then laser engraving that for a white-on-black effect. We happened to have a piece of prepared plywood, which turned out to be the best of the bunch.

After test driving the puzzle, Victoire was satisfied with how it felt, and she was able to set up the laser job and produce enough puzzles to take with her for the first day of class in a couple of weeks.

Victoire walked in with an idea, and walked out with a v1 prototype about an hour and a half later, feeling super charged up and empowered. Priceless.

27Nov 2017

Laser Kumiko

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I’ve been working off and on for months on a furniture project, a set of cabinet door panels inspired by the Japanese woodworking art of kumiko. Today I was finally able to laser cut a full-scale prototype of the project.

Here’s a look at the Illustrator file, a painstakingly assembled collection of hexagons, based on three archetypes:

Here’s what was left in the laser:

I couldn’t be happier with the result, and it’s particularly thrilling to hold in my hand something that has lived for so long inside my head and on a computer screen.

Update – Amazing when backlit!

02Sep 2016

Calculus Models and Learning From Students

by Zack ⋅ 4 Comments

Below is Alex Hartigan, a Folsom Lake College Engineering student preparing some Calculus III models he’s been developing in collaboration with Kevin Pipkin (Math) and that he printed on the new Form 2, which has gotten a lot of use lately, most recently with the Enabling the Future project.

Alex and I connected last semester, and finally got the chance to work together on this Math project. Alex has a lot of skills in 3D design and printing, as well as experience on the Form 1, and through the process of preparing the Calc models, he taught me a whole lot about the finer points of printing on the Form 2, including various layout tips, and the manual editing of supports.

The Form 2 models came out great:

The Ultimaker 2 ones, not so much, though the failure at least resulted in some interesting artifacts:

Best of all, Max Mahoney (Chemistry) dropped by, and we recruited Alex to work on the chemistry project we prototyped the other day. One of my favorite parts of working with students is learning from them, and I hope to learn a lot from Alex before he heads off to Sac State next fall.

Tag Archives: Prototype

Students Making Things

Mushroom Planting Pot v1.0

Practical Making – Fixing a Broken Clock

Puzzle Prototyping

How Many Bubbles in a Bar of Soap?

Laser Kumiko

Calculus Models and Learning From Students