Final Project: The Final Assembly!

Since all of my parts were printed, I was able to tap all of the pieces for the connector rod to screw into. I then sanded the lower two parts of the wand to smooth out the rough edges, since one of them warped a little bit. I then set the two halves of the wand up in the makeshift stand and painted them. Once they were dry, I wet sanded some imperfections out and then did another coat of spray paint. The next step was using a black acrylic paint to rub into the wand, which gave it an aged look.

One thing I had not originally planned on including in my design was the white strip with markings (shown below). Bryan had the idea of printing it in black and white vinyl and adhering it to the wand, which I honestly think brought the caliber of the project waaaaaay up. We did a test with the vinyl, then adjusted the vectors in Photoshop and Illustrator to  It actually looked like the real thing.

When everything was sanded, painted, and adhered to my approval, it was time to assemble the wand. Once again, Bryan was a HUGE source of guidance as he soldered the wiring together for the circuit. The tapped rods had to be shortened again to screw perfectly into both halves of the wand, so some superglue was needed to make certain we wouldn't have any problems going forward. As we wired it up, we did continual tests for the sake of testing. (God forbid we put it together and it didn't work!) The wand did indeed work, to my relief.

 

More pictures to come later! I'm so happy with how this project turned out. I don't think I've ever been so excited about a project (or worked harder on one, for that matter). Thanks again to my professor, Bryan Cera, for the hours of help and words of encouragement during the course of this project.

Virtual Vehicle: Final Make

As I've said before, I'm terrible at keeping up with blogging....so much for forming a habit. Regardless of that, our final car print turned out fairly well, although we did have a bit of an issue with detail parts being a bit small to actually attach to the car. Seeing as I was much less comfortable with Inventor when we were actively working on this project, I enjoyed putting the vehicle together. It was a growing process for me in terms of using Inventor for more than just individual sketches and parts, as well as a jumping off point for getting comfortable with 3D-printing.

 

Final Project: Design and Printing Updates

Hello, all! I'm excited to say that the Elder Wand is progressing nicely. Just to recap, earlier in the week, I printed the first two parts (out of the four 3D-printed parts) of the wand, sanded them, and cleaned up some imperfections with epoxy. Since the wand parts will all screw together with pieces of metal rod, I tapped the wand pieces and the metal rod pieces as well. Just putting the two pieces together made me so excited for the end result.

The tapped ends of each wand segment will screw into this handy base that Bryan had in the Atelier.

I spent quite some time working out how I would get the hardware into my wand, especially putting the battery into the base of the wand. This required a bit of reworking and continuous tweaking, but I'm pleased with the final design. Thank you to Bryan for putting together the hardware that will go into the base!

A quarter-cut of the base design, which allows for the appropriate hardware to be inserted or removed.

The final assembly.

What's next, you might ask? I left the Atelier Saturday night, unabashedly exhausted and also satisfied with a full day's work, while the other two parts finished printing. Now I'll just have to get rid of the support material, sand the wand to get rid of the obvious print grain appearance, and paint the parts. Bryan suggested I print the wand in a couple pieces, so I'll be painting it all together to get a consistent look for each piece. Once it's dry, I'll be able to work out any remaining imperfections and put together the hardware. 

More updates will come after tomorrow's painting!!!!! I cannot use enough exclamation marks to convey my excitement!

Final Project: Initial Wand Prints

After some test prints, I was able to make a lot of progress on the wand design. The parts will screw together, made possible by tapping the models. Yay for more tool skills!

 

I've had a lot of interesting ideas and suggestions come up that have challenged me to think creatively for this project. Creating the individual parts was strangely relaxing, and I found myself working for hours at a time on design tweaks. I also created CAD models of the individual hardware pieces (like the LED and switch), so I'm very pleased with the assembly so far! (Pictures to come...)