Week 17: Wildcard Week

Assignment: Design and produce something with a digital fabrication process (incorporating computer-aided design and manufacturing) not covered in another assignment, documenting the requirements that your assignment meets, and including everything necessary to reproduce it. Possibilities include (but are not limited to) composites, textiles, biotechnology, robotics, folding, and cooking



Group Assignment: Produce test coupons for your composite fabrication process(es)

As a group assignment this week we did mill a very simple test design, a curvy shape in solidworks. Saved it as an .stl to machine it and then we generated tool paths in vcarve as following..
Initially, a new Vcarve file was opened and the dimensions were set according to the size of the model (222 x 101mm). Then by importing the Component/3D model(.sldprt file). Now cutomize your job as following.


The 3D model is being set in the proper plane

In the next step we place the model at center so that the model comes inside the dimesnions we set.


The 3D model is placed at the center
From the toolpath tab, we generate the toolpath for roughing and finsihing.


The roughing is being done with the tool foam roughing 0.5 inch tool which is already added in the tool list


The preview of model after roughing



The preview of model while finishing

The next step was to cut the model on the 40mm foam, the toolpaths were generated and then used in cutting on shopbot.


shopbot at work of roughing & finishing the model
We are using Jute as the fiber, we already cut the two pices on Laser cutter. The arrangement of the composite is shown below:
  • Layer1: Food wrapping plastic
  • Layer2: mold of oam covered with wrapping plastic
  • Layer3: 2 pieces of jute fiber mixed in resin
  • Layer4: wrapping plastic
  • Layer5: Breather for vaccum


  • The arrangement of vacum for the model



    The model is being put in the vaccum for curing for at least one day

    The model was put for curing for the whole day and then the next day, we removed the mold and removed all the extra layers.


    The mold is removed and the hardened composite is ready

    Individual Assignment: Read the safety data sheet (SDS) and technical data sheet (TDS) for the resins that you're using design and fabricate a 3D mold (~ft2) and produce a fiber composite part in it, with resin infusion and compaction

    This week was very interesting yet chellanging. As we were not told what we should do and it was all open to us. Yet i decided to make a water tank of boat like shape for my final project. So i started with 3d designing. Before going any further let's explore some saftey measures.

    Safety Datasheet - A

    Safety Datasheet - B

    Technical Datasheet



    Moving on to 3d designing i strted with a simple sketch as following..

    Then made plane parallel to front plane to sketch the top..

    Next sketched over plane 2, by now i have following sketch as final one for my design ready to be extruded.

    Next i simply extruded the sketch and gave it some fillet by selecting two top-bottom faces/sketches.

    and following scenes show the final 3d model..

    Now save it as an stl file, and lets move to vcarve.

    Open Vcarve and import stl file we generated.

    I had imported as following..

    create an appropriate bed by specifying width and height.

    Now move it to an appropriate position as to make it ready for cut..

    Now generate and save toolpath files, preview looks as follwoing..

    Now lets make the mold.. Shopbot doing finishing job, as srm did in molding and casting week.

    Mold is ready and rapped in food raping shoper..

    Let's cast it. To do so lets first get the material we need.



    Make solution by adding hardner to resin. Take, dip and mix jute into the solution properly untill it gets hot..
    Next vaccume it and wait..

    Now just cut the uunwanted part.

    That is it, we have it ready..


    Note: As i made this composite design to be used in my final project, hence after casting i realized that dimensions doesn't suit my final project model so i modified it accordingly by making it more deep and relatively bigger to fit my final project. Depth was increased to 76mm and length was increased to 13in from 10in. Attached files are the improved once.. so don't get confused!

    Click here to get design files.. Happy composites!


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    Copyright © 2019 Azmat Hussain