Assignment 1 - Mold documentation
Documentation for my mold
Introduction
With this assignment I was working together with Daniel. We decided to let me do mold 3, and Daniel mold 2. Whoever was finished first would do mold 1 as well. Mold 3 was the 3D mold, I choose this one because it seemed the most interesting to me because you could basically make what ever you want since most things in life are 3D.
Daniels' mold 1 and 2
Daniel and me decided that he could do mold 2 and mold 1 and I would do mold 3. Mold 2 is an 2,5 D object and mold 1 is the object itself and mold 3 is the 3D object. Maybe there was some miscommunication because later on I saw that his mold 2 wasn't a 2,5 D mold but a 3D one, the one I also did. But I think he did a good job, especially with mold 1; he discovered that you can upload an .PNG into Fusion 360 and it can cut ino the mold, which is a handy trick to know.
Qlone
After some researching I found an app called 'Qlone'. This app makes a photo into a 3D object. I thought this would be an easy way so that I wouldn't have to create a 3D object myself and save some time with that. This sounded to good to be true, and indeed, it was. I had to print out some sort of QR code and put the object that I wanted to have a 3D object of, on the QR map. The 3D object came out very unaesthetic! I even chose for a simple object without too many angles, a pack of cigarettes, but it still didn't do the job.
Internet Lego man
After the failure of making something in Qlone, I decided to still go on in Fusion. For the 3D mold I have chosen to make a Lego man. I chose this because the Lego man is made out of simple figures put together, like boxes and spheres, the edges are just adjusted. Since this would be my first experience with Fusion 360 I did not wanted to make this a experience that would be too difficult.
In the first 2/3 days I was busy making my own 3D model, however I had not enough time to finish my mold and 3D object, so, (against my own norms, I'm not proud of it) I printed a 3D model that I have found on the internet so that it was finished for the show & tell. But I knew that I would finish my own one very soon, just not on time. The one that I took from internet is this one:
I knew that I could make this myself because it is not a complex 3D object, and I am going to, later in this documentation, but for now I just didn't had the time unfortunately.
Printing
The printing went pretty smooth, however, I forgot to turn on support in Cura so the first time a piece of the Lego man was printed in the air and it didn't stick to the bottom part of the printer. Luckily, I watched the printer print the first 15-30minutes, like recommended, so I saw this happening. The first time it came out like this:
When Henk told me why it was doing this I changed the settings with him in Cura and about an hour and a half it came out perfectly! I chose for a white fillament because I wanted to paint on it later.
After pulling off the support with tweezers it came out like this:
End result
I choose to paint it a bit to let it come more alive and make it look like a Lego man a bit more. I just used simple acrylic paint bought at Action.
Vacuum former
After the 3D Print was done I created a 2.5D mold of the 3D object because I did not have a mold of the 3D object yet. I simply put the Lego man on the frame and put PET-film on top of it. I closed the frame and because of the heat the film will go around the LEGO-man.
My own 3D print
After the Show & tell was over I went on with finishing my own 3D Lego man because I wanted to have something that I completely designed myself. As my reference for the Lego man I used this picture:
First assumptions
I knew hat the arms were going to be the toughest part because that part is not just a figure, it is very adjusted in a way that I don't know how to do. Parts like the upper body and legs are simply stretched out squares or pipes. The hands are a cilinder with a hole in it and a square is cut into the cilinder on one side to make the hands open. With these assumptions I started designing:
End result
This GIF is only about 30 seconds, but in real life this took me about 2 days because I was completely new to 3D designing. I asked help on the Autodesk forums and watched a few tutorials. Overall, this experience was very fun and I have learned a lot in about a week and a half.
Reflection
I am pretty happy with my end result. Of course it's not as detailed as the one I have printed before and took from the internet but, hey, at least it's mine and I designed it myself. Like I said in my assumptions, the arms were the toughest part that's why I chose to just make rectangles instead of some very adjusted body part, unfortunately I haven't figured out how to make something like that yet.
My own Mold
This mold was such a pain in the ass! To make the mold itself it went very smootly, the only thing that kept on happening was that some bodyparts didn't cut into the mold, like on this picture:
Stuck with a problem
The legs and arms were perfectly fine, just the head and the upper body did not go into the mold and I couldn't figure out why. After remaking the mold several times, following every step of this tutorial (which was very helpful by the way), I could still not figure out why it was doing this over and over. After trying several things I decided to go on Autodesk forum and ask my question (which I shoud've done way earlier!), someone came with the answer to my problem:
Solution
The head of the upper body and head were hollow! This sounds so logical now but I haven't thought of it before. That is why it didn't cut through mold. I tried filling the hollow parts with create > boundry fill, but unfortunately it didn't work. After spending a lot of time on the same thing and not figuring out how to do it, I decided to just make the upperbody and head again. It didn't turn out as nice as it was before but I was already happy that I knew the answer to my problem. When deleting my old upperbody and head I designed them again in the solid menu. After that I made the mold (again, lol), it looked like this:
End result
On the picture above you can see the bottom part of the mold, and it finally turned out as I wanted to, kinda. I think the Lego man is to wide, but I didn't wanted to do it all over again. I then put some spheres with a diameter of 4mm on each corner of the bottom mold and combined it. After combining I could split the sphere faces of the top mold so that it would substract the spheres on the top mold. When printed out, the spheres of the bottom mold fall into the holes of the top mold. I made a hole to put the material in on the upper body of the Lego man because it is in the middle, and it just seemed the most logical place to me, I think because the material would go eevenly through the hole body. I made an airhole, which was smaller than the material hole, on the highest part of the Lego man, which was the head.
Reflection
Because of the virus I haven't had the time to go to school and print the mold out yet, so I am not totally sure about the end result. But what I see on my screen and the effort I have put into designing this I can say that I am proud of what I have made. Of course I still see some things that I have wanted to do differently, like the arms or making the man a bit less wide but, I couldn't have thought of designing this 1.5 week ago. I'm very excited to see how it will turn out when it is printed.
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