During this unit, we were challenged to design anything we desired to make out of wood, and create it on the software, Fusion. When we began this unit, I had an idea of designing a lamp, but I also wanted to make a box, so I had to come up with a way to incorporate these two ideas together. I wanted to design an object that would allow for late night reading, and just holding little gimmicks and toys that I own. Combining these two ideas for the function I desired was the first challenge that I faced, and I had to brainstorm, and eventually ended up with two ideas. Either I design my box with the compartment underneath and the lamp on top, or I design the lamp underneath and the compartment above. I decided to create a lamp box with the second option, because there is a cable to be plugged in at the base of the lamp itself, which would look odd when placed into the box – a cable from a hole placed randomly in the middle of a wooden side of the box. Another thought that came to mind when choosing the second option, was if there was going to be a compartment in this box of mine, how could I possibly even open it if it was under the lamp? I also realized that making a drawer in the bottom of the box would use much more wood, and also make me design the entire lamp box itself significantly larger than my final product because designing a drawer would mean that it has to fit inside of the box, and has inner walls, which would make the compartment size smaller than what I want which pressures me to increase the size of the entire box, which I didn’t want to do. I originally took some tissue paper and glued it to the walls of my lamp box, but then felt a sense of worry that when I picked it up, I could potentially break the tissue paper, so I attached a layer of plastic film underneath the tissue paper, covering the holes from the inside directly, which made the tissue paper stronger, and have this unique, shiny look to it. It took many times to design my final product because when I needed the most help, I was unable to receive that help from the adults there, which stood as a huge struggle and obstacle in producing my final design.
In Product Design, we have learned how to use two different software applications, Fusion 360, and LightBurn. In Fusion 360, I have learnt many different skills that allow me to design my product, but the most challenging thing I discovered while in Product Design this year, was how difficult it was to separate objects in my sketch when transitioning from Fusion to LightBurn. When making my design, I most struggled with 3 of my 7 panels. The first panel I struggled with, was my cloud and stars panels. On this panel, there is a planet, which I originally wanted to keep the ring in the middle, and cut off the round excess pieces of the planet, but when I had to export my Fusion file to LightBurn, I quickly realized that I couldn’t keep the ring in place without not cutting off the round part of the planet like I had originally planned to do. I was unable to get the help I needed to learn how to separate these parts that I wanted to, and eventually cut out the entire planet, and had to glue in the round parts to the tissue paper, because even though I asked for all pieces to be returned to me, the ring that I designed, did not come back with my project, and so I had to use the round part of the planet, which I eventually painted, and began to like.
(1) This original design I created would have cut out the ring and kept it in place, but when the planet itself was cut out, half of the round part would be fully cut out, some of it only etched into the wood, meaning that it is still connected to the ring, which I do not want.
(2) In this design (which I used for my final product), I tell the laser cutter to fully cut out the entire planet, which I can then glue the pieces I want onto the tissue paper behind the holes. I had to resort to using the round parts surrounding the planet for my final product, because the middle ring never came back with the rest of my product.
The second panel that I struggled to design, was my butterfly panel. When I first designed my butterfly panel, I had a butterfly, and some flowers placed randomly over the panel. Again, I most struggled when exporting to LightBurn, because I wanted to fully remove the wings, but keep the body structure, and LightBurn would not allow me to remove the wings without having to completely remove the inner structure and place it into the middle again once cut out.
(1) At the beginning, my design would’ve cut slightly into the wood for the head and antennae, but forced me to remove the middle and wings, when I only wanted to cut out the wings. I couldn’t make the middle part coloured in black, because then the wings being basically attached to it would not be cut out properly, leaving the wing still partially attached to the butterfly, while the rest of the wing is disconnected, making the wing very fragile, and not how I wanted it. When I sent this to the laser cutter and received my prototype, I also realized that the wings didn’t have outlines when designed like this, and just created two large, ugly hollow spaces that looked like random blobs of holes on my prototype, which had to change.
(2) In my new design, I considered how to make outlines for the wings, and instead of the randomly placed flowers, I drew two lines which allowed for even more light to exit the lamp when turned on.
(3) Using the same basic idea from my first design, the head and antennae were to be etched into the wood, while I cut all the other pieces out, and glued the outlines back into their places once cut out. I also cut out the middle, and glued it onto the tissue paper and plastic film when finished colouring.
I finally decided that I would be okay cutting out the middle body structure, and would glue it the the backing I planned on placing in to cover the holes, but when I received my first prototype, I didn’t like how the wings looked without any form of outlines, and so I edited my design to have a 2 millimetre thick wing outline, because I wanted it to be thin, but not too thin and fragile that it would snap. I had to cut out most of the butterfly wing and body structure pieces, but I was able to glue them to the tissue paper and plastic film I placed at the back. Instead of the flowers, I decided to design two lines, one above and one below the butterfly, because it would allow more light to exit the box when the lamp is on. These two lines also came into good use after the had been cut out, because they acted like bowels that I could place my sun panel on to create the compartment.
The third panel that I had difficulties creating, was my moon and stars panel. This panel consists of a large circle that has a crescent moon, and a remainder of the circle is a moon cast that I designed stars into. I struggled to design this panel because when I exported the file to LightBurn, I couldn’t separately cut and etch lines into the wood, meaning that I would end up cutting the entire circle out of the wood, including the moon, which I didn’t want to. Multiple times, I worked with teachers to try and use different methods such as extruding and creating projections of the panel to separate the two pieces from each other, but eventually I decided upon one idea. In my final product, I drew the two parts of the circle detached in Fusion 360, but when uploaded into LightBurn, I manually moved the two pieces together, and coloured the lines how I wanted.
(1) This was the original design for the moon. I was unable to make the right side of the circle completely red, meaning that there would be a large curved cut down the middle of the circle, but the outline of the circle would be there, and would not allow the right side to detach how I desired for it to be.
(2) In Fusion 360, I separated the two parts, which took some trial and error when transferring to LightBurn multiple times, but eventually, I was able to send the design to LightBurn, with all the pieces still there.
(3) In LightBurn, I could finally colour the moon itself black, and the cast of the moon red. I was then able to manually drag the moon casting down to interlock with the inner curve of the moon which when cut out, perfectly allowed the moon casting to be cut out, and the crescent moon to be etched into the wood just how I wanted.
Overall, I struggled to use and learn new software, but when I was challenged, I was able to work past it, with or without the help I needed.
During this course, I have learned how to use new applications such as Fusion 360 and LightBurn, and have bettered my ability to persevere through my struggles and get things done. For new students entering this course, I think they should realize that at any point in time you need help, get help from teachers that know what they are doing immediately, because if you don’t or can’t you fall far behind, and will need even more help in the future. I think an important part of learning throughout this unit, is experimenting with different tactics, and if you know what you want to achieve with your designs, don’t try to change for an easier method, get help with what you want, and follow that idea you have. Back at the start of the course, if I had known that I could separate a lot of my pieces of my designs, I think that it would’ve made my life easier than making random choices and hoping it works out when in all my prototypes. If I could have redone the entire class over again, the biggest change I would have made the second time around, would be testing other new tools on Fusion, because when you have an idea of what tool you need, you can learn more by using new, different tools or experimenting with tools you have been partially introduced to in previous lessons to help you design what you want to, how you want to. I think this course was very much enjoyable to take, but one minor detail that could be improved, is maybe if Ms. Kim could check in with us more often to help us, and I know that she was absent and likely unable to help us at the time, but I personally was feeling very stressed and was struggling a lot to work on this project when I couldn’t get any help, and I don’t think for future students that it would be good to deal with that while working and making mistakes.