7. Making of the Box and Wallet¶
I already posted all the design data in 1. Project Summary. You can just download the files and load them on to the firmware for CNC milling or 3D printing. But I had very sepecial experience in making the box mount and a leather wallet to be paired to the Alarm Device. I believe that they are worth noting.
7-1. Finishing of the Box Mount¶
One of the advantage I had by joining in the Nagaoka Institute of Design (NID) Prototyping Room in May was that NID had been heavily relying on SLA 3D-printing. There are two Formlab printers and two different color resins, white and clear, are in stock. In the first week since I joined in NID, I saw one student approaching the Prototyping Room to make a clear soy sauce bottle.
She used clear resin for 3D-printing. Then after the printed objects were cleansed and dried, she spent time in water sanding. Starting with No.800 fineness, she switched two or three times till No.2000 fineness. As she continued sanding, the bottle surface dramatically became clear.
I made the first box cover with the FDM printer and white PLA filament. But I wanted to make the mechanism inside the Alarm Device as transparent as possible. After watching the NID student working on water-sanding, I decided to do it myself. Here is the steps I have taken:
3D-printing with an SLA printer.
Water-sanding three times to make the surface clear.
Spray clear lacquar by 5 sec, and wait.
The cover became clear enough.
Replacing the cover with a clear one.
Another advantage I observed in using an SLA printer was general fineness of the print result. Instead of just simply designing the cover with a slight margin from the box base, I designed two tiny hooks to ensure that the cover could hold the base box without incurring unnecessory load on the hooks. With more fine print result with SLA 3D-printing, it seemed that it fits a little better than the one FDM-printed.
7-2. Making of a Leather Wallet¶
In the Final Project, one of the requirements was that we should apply subtractive manufacturing techniques as well as additive manufacturing. Additive manufacuturing is fine as I already used 3D-printing technology. Then the question is what to do with subtractive manufacturing, besides PCB milling. In this regard, I decided to cut the leather cloth by the lasercutter and stitch the cloths manually to make a leather wallet.
The details were already described in Week16. System Integration. So here I just post a few snapshots of the making process.
Initial sketch of the wallet design
Mock model with cardboard
The Alarm Device could be fit.
But the passport pocket was too tight.
Redesigned and the lasercut.
Stitching manually.
Stitching manually.
Both Alarm and passport are fit.
Final.
7-3. Making of a Logo Sticker¶
NID also has a cutting plotter: Graphtec Cutting Plotter CE6000.
The cutting plotter is one of the most frequently used machines by the NID students, second to Trotec 400 lasercutter. As a lab technician, I should be familiar to the operations of the machines equipped there. Also, I had been feeling that the two devices of my Final Project, which are supposed to be paired up, should show that they were pairs. So as part of my familiarization to the machine operations and as part of my response to the Final Project requirements of integrating subtractive manufacturing process, I tried to cut out my logo sticker to be attached to the device and mobile phone.
This is a last addition to the Alarm Device design. In order to make a better design of my logo, I went back to my documentation for Week2 and improved my product logo design with Adobe Photoshop.
For the general instruction for operating the cutting plotter, I followed my experience documented in Week3 Computer-Assisted Cutting.
I cut four stickers. After I put one on the cover of the Alarm Device and another on my mobile phone, the other two were pasted on the laptop I mainly used for coding the program for the Final Project.
