Kinetic Sculpture
This weeks topic were kinetic structures/sculptures aka mechanical designs with interlocking moving parts that could serve either practical or esthetic purpose - or both. My idea was to make a mechanical version of digital clock.
First I came up with an idea of mounting individual segments to rotating apparatus and changing the numbers by rotating each of segments in a specific way, but this design was not interesting enough and would be quite bulky, so I went a quite different idea that made use of rotating disc with cutouts that would reveal the number on the disc below. First I tried sketching the design by hand, which was quite difficult and I was not satisfied with the result.
So with the help from course coordinator Jiří Zemánek I used a programming base CAD software called OpenSCAD to design a new front with cutouts for my clock. The parametric program worked well, but I overlook that the design required not only places with cutouts, but also places without them. Thus the first prototype was a bust, but it makes for a nice coaster.
To fix this problem I added "negative" cutouts into the design to keep track of the spots where the cutouts should not be. After that I manually rotated each number on the disc so none of the cutouts would overlap with negative spots and printed the new design on a 3D printer.
To fit the theme of kinetic sculpture, I added gears and crank to the design to allow for continuous rotation of the main disk and also make the whole design look more sculpture-like and technical. I printed all the parts on my 3D printer and assembled them, using wooden toothpicks as rods for the gears. The final creation can be seen below.
SLA 3D Printing
This week we also got to try printing on a SLA printer, which uses UV hardening resin instead of filament and UV display to print model in much greater details. I printed a small kitsune model for myself that I downloaded from the internet and was taken aback by how smooth the model was and how little were the individual layers visible.
I was a bit skeptical about the quality of details the printer was capable of so I went with simpler model, but after looking at some of the other prints and how well the printer handled the intricate details, I was a bit sad I didn't go with a more complex model like a figurine.
Conclusion
I am very happy I was able to get my clock working even with all the struggle and would like to iterate on this design and continue to improve it and as I said already, I am more than impressed with the precision of SLA printer and would definitely like to try printing something more challenging.