This semester I was really looking forward to creating, in my Product design class, something I could use often, in my room, at home, or even at school.

Part 1:

This year, during semester one, in Product design, our second unit was the Laser Cut Project. In this unit we could choose between creating/designing a locker phone holder, or a lamp. Already having a place for my phone, and wanting some beautiful décor to light up my room at night, I chose the lamp.

At first we were all working on the phone holder, and creating designs in Fusion 360, the designing/creating platform we used this year, to get used to the software. We were mainly working to learn how to use Fusion and how to create designs we wanted. …..We got the choice to continue our work on the phone holder, or we could start our work on creating a lamp.

We scoured the internet for inspiration, and made our desired designs. We then did our best to trace those designs, trying our hardest to make them look like the originals. Which would then be used to cut into the wood via the school’s laser cutter later on in the process. 

At first I wanted to have a quote, I had many great options, and it was hard to choose one. I choose this one out of the others.  

But I was having technical problems, and in the end it revealed too difficult, to include with the limited time given to complete the project. So I ended up with just a couple of basic, but still beautiful designs. 

I was also deciding between several favored patterns/designs to put on the sides, for the top of the lamp. I had inspiration and created my own design, it is simple and beautiful, so that light can get through.

I had forgotten to add a hole at the bottom of the back piece for the chord of the bulb, so before I submitted for the final product into wood, I added the hole for the chord. After my project was cut into wood I discovered there was an issue that made it so the top piece would fit into place with one of the sides, so I had one of the adults help me, and she used a big saw to trim off a little bit so that the pieces would fit.

Part 2: 

In Fusion I learned to create sketches and designs within the sketches. I learned to use the spline tools to help me trace ideas and simple images with various strait and curves lines. I really liked the spline tool because it allowed me to get as close as possible to the outcome I desired. I started practicing using Fusion with simple things like shapes and emojis, I then moved on to more difficult designs like cartoon characters and images. I started working on creating Stitch, from the Disney movie Lilo and Stitch, because I think he is super cute, and I was determined to do a good job. I tried several times to do a couple different styles of ears and eyes, here’s one of my favorites that I did:

Later on in my design process after I decided what I was going to use for my lamp, I started working on those designs. One of said designs was this tree, here’s the beginning of me working on it: 

We did this using the canvas tool in fusion, allowing us to have the imported picture in the back ground as we used the spline tool to trace it. It went well for me most of the time, although my canvases had a technical issue that I had to complete the trace that lesson, or the next time I logged onto fusion the canvas would be there, but invisible, not allowing me to continue my tracing. 

I also did an image of a crescent moon with mountains and trees. Although, when I started to laser cut this design into cardboard for my prototype, some of the parts were too close together so parts that I wanted to stay intact came off, so I had to shift some of the parts further away from each other. The end product was beautiful so it was definitely worth it!

We were given a link to this website, MakerCase, that we would put the measurement of the box/lamp we wanted and then it would give us the proportion net for us to import to our Fusion. We needed to select “Download DXF” otherwise it would import into Fusion. Once the net was in Fusion we could adjust the size of our designs to fit into the box sizes and whether we wanted a design in the front or back. 

We worked on creating several prototypes importing the designs from Fusion into LightBurn, which we could color the lines with the color coded key to tell the laser cutter what to do, e.g. Red=cut, black=trace/fill in.  

Then we could take the file directly from Lightburn and submit it to the form for laser cut requests, with the teachers permission we could submit it and it would probably be cut by the next lesson.

The prototypes would be cut into cardboard, and using masking tape we would put together the pieces to see how that fit, how the designs worked, if anything fell off or was too flimsy, and if we needed to fix anything. I changed the size for my box a couple times, as well as the design I chose to have cut into it.

Here’s the link to a time lapse of me building my first prototype:

RPReplay_Final1677417266.mov

The process for submitting for the final product was generally the same as the prototype except in the name of the file we changed the material and possibly the material thickness, e.g. from cardboard, 5mm to wood, 5mm. They had different thicknesses of wood and cardboard, for cardboard they had 3mm&5mm, and for wood they had 5mm&7mm. I went with the 5mm wood because that’s what the teacher recommended.

Part 3:

1. Some advice I’d like to give to the incoming Product Design students is that you should definitely spend time at home outside of the class to get used to and practice using the software like Fusion.
2. It would have definitely helped me by the start if I knew generally what designs I wanted and how I was going to do them, because I did spend a couple classes mostly looking for inspiration.
3. If I could do the class over I would probably work faster and less laid back with my work, so I would be able to get it done quicker, more productively and add more fun things to my designs.
4. It was difficult for me to decide on which designs and patterns I wanted for my lamp as I am very indecisive.
5. It would probably be useful for a bit of homework, and DX notices to remind students of what to expect and to prepare for next class. Maybe Ms. Kim could do some walking around the classroom during class and check on the students during the lesson to see how they are getting along and to point out something that they may be doing wrong without realizing, as well as giving students more opportunities to ask questions of what to expect
6. One thing that was hugely useful was Maker Case, and I’m sure even if we had stayed in person the whole time we wouldn’t have had enough time to create our own nets, have them work, and be able to complete the projects and the blog. So even though we are hopefully staying in person this semester, I think Maker Case should still be included in the tools.
7. I think Ms. Kim did a great job and was doing her best, but sometimes when we asked questions she wouldn’t always answer them in a way that is helpful, or give an answer not completely related to the question. But I think Ms. Kim did a great job based off of the circumstances, she just could’ve maybe done a bit better, I think we all could’ve done a little better too.