Project Planning

While thinking about what I wanted to do for my laser cut project, I kept circling back to the idea of a kinetic piece or automaton. I ended up writing out a whole list of things I might be able to do with moving wood parts. I loved the complexity, challenges, and vast amount of options this provided me, but those same elements turned into obstacles pretty quickly.

I found that I had so many ideas, and almost all of them would be too complex and time consuming for me to manage in the time frame given, along with all my other classes and commitments. My friends ended up helping in minor ways and giving indirect inspiration for my current design. 

This past week has been really stressful, and I've felt like my school life has sort of been tumbling around me while I just smile and try my best to be fine in the meantime. So I drew that as an idea for a kinetic sculpture.

I found it was near impossible to freehand the gears, so I found a website that provided me with gear templates. After screenshotting the templates, I outlined them in Rhino and arranged them into a nice chain.

Once everything was traced and placed, I extruded the curves to get a better picture of how the gears and foundation would look when cut and assembled in wood. I created the more structural aspects after confirming my satisfaction with the base.

After modelling the entire project, I took each part and duplicated the edges to create a 2-dimensional template for the laser cutter. I also added some numbers and etching to indicate placement of gears and other parts, to reduce confusion during assembly later on. I think arranging all the pieces into the smallest area to conserve material was one of my favourite parts of this. I love puzzles and simple logic problems.

As a part of my laser engraving and cutting test, I made a few of the gears as prototypes. They fit together incredibly well in my opinion, and boosted my confidence in my design functioning relatively flawlessly. I'm really proud of my project, even though it's just a digital model and some prototype gears at this point.

I also made some low-effort renders for fun.

- Pete

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