DESIGN PROJECTS

Laser Cut Earrings

Since we are entering the holiday season, I wanted to create some personalized gifts for my friends. I settled on creating laser cut earrings out of both acrylic and birchwood. The hardest part about creating the earrings was creating the 2D sketches in CAD, as complicated curved geometries are harder to model exactly. One of the birchwood designs is featured below. Check out the video to see all of the designs I made and my process of making them.

Clay Form of a Spray Bottle

Often products with sleek curves are modeled using clay in order to capture both how the product will look and the geometry of the lines that are difficult to model precisely with a CAD package. I decided to look at how to make a spray bottle that will fit nicely in the user's hand. In order to get a solid base to create a clay mold around, a 3D, hollow paper model was created using a software named Pepakura. This 3D hollow structure was filled with foam and served as a structure to mold the clay around. As you will see the design process evolved from initial sketches to a CAD model to the final product.

Creating a Resin Mold

Processes such as injection molding are used to create high volumes of the same product. However, using a mold for a product introduces complexities such as where to fill the mold to prevent bubbles from forming or to ensure the mold fills in its entirety. In addition, two halves a mold must meet at a parting line, and where this is placed on the product can make a large difference in the overall asthetics. Below you will see an exploded view of a sketch I created to visualize how the mold will release my desired product, a peanut Christmas ornament. The turquiose silicone molds beside it were formed over the course of 3 days due to the high curing time of the silicone. I decided to fill the mold from the back to ensure the feet of the figurine were completely filled along with the details of the face. In the side by side comparison of the final mold with the intial figurine, you will see that a high level of detail was transfered from the mold to the final resin prototype.

Adjustable Phone Stand

In order to create an item that would sit nicely on my desktop, I strove to create a stand for my phone that would enable me to see the screen at a number on angles. To achieve this, I made a stand out of black acryclic that used an internal planet gear to rotate the phone through approximately 130 degrees of motion. In future iterations of this design, I would like to add a clamping mechanism, that hold the phone in place even if its vigorously rotated.

Transforming Flower Vase

Laser cutting paper gives you the unique ability to make pure cuts in the paper or dotted lines that function as a "rip and tear" feature. For this project, I was aiming to extend the life of a paper vase by allowing paper roses to be cut from its sides. This way, once the real flowers that were contained by the vase died, the paper roses could be used as a stand in until the flowers were replaced. The paper flowers can be accumulated over time and used to create a paper flower bouquet.

Collapsable Coffee Holder

This project was my first attempt working with both acrylic and a laser cutter. The goal of this product was to create a lightweight and highly portable coffee cup holder that a hiker could easily carry without sacrificing valuable space. In order to achieve this, I incorporated a carabiner as the handle that supported two acrylic rings. This way the rings, when not in use, could be clipped into the carabiner and subsequently onto the backpack of the traveler. No backpack space would be required to travel with the coffee holder. Below you can see the collapsed and expanced view.