Jay Salter Final Project: Mixed Techniques

 Process: This project was by far the most comprehensive work I have done in class. I began working on my project based on the drafts I did in my notebook. After experimenting for a while in Fusion, I settled on a double wall design to allow for structural stability on the inside while maintaining a smooth exterior. This design also allowed me to insert a lip for the chess board to sit in smoothly. 

I worked from a similar workflow to the first lasercutting project by extruding from a variety of sketches. It took a lot of testing to fit the chessboard onto a sheet of plywood while maintaining large enough tiles for the miniatures to fit. 

After designing the box in Fusion, I exported the dxf files, transferred them to Illustrator, and then began cutting out my pieces. I ran into issues with the laser cutter though as pieces came out slanted or missing length -- after talking with Josh we realized the belt may have been misaligned leading to imperfections with my cuts. I worked on a few drafts of pieces and after some testing I was able to move forward by accounting for the different sized pieces. The final interior walls look different than the original design, but it still feels sturdy and does not contain any major unsightly gaps. 


A bulk of my fabrication time involved printing the miniatures for the chess pieces. I had a total of 32 to make with very fine details, which led to several issues I had to overcome. I had multiple pieces fail during the printing process and ran into multiple other issues with filament and the printers. Josh helped me troubleshoot several of these problems until I was able to smoothly print two pieces at a time. However, I ran into other issues when breaking pieces out of the supports. A few of the chess pieces are missing small segments as a result, but due to the time constraints I had to settle for getting as close to "perfect" as possible. 

After fabricating each of my pieces, I used wood stain to darken the outer walls of my box and half of the tiles. My original idea was to use acrylic for the tiles, but after seeing how the wood stain looked for the walls, I changed plans and cut out a new series of tiles on a lighter piece of plywood. The resulting contrast between the stained and unstained pieces created an effect I really enjoyed. 

Result:

Overall, I'm extremely proud of the final project. This project allowed me to experiment with a variety of tools and materials. Additionally, I really enjoyed the process of adapting and testing different ideas as I developed my overall project -- this is by far the most I've had to change from my original idea, and some of the challenges I ran into allowed me to create a more visually appealing end product. 

I ended up changing so many pieces of my original outline in order to ensure the final product was both functional and met the aesthetic standards I wanted. Additionally, as a result of my changes I had to learn how to use both the 3D printers and laser cutters in much more depth than I originally did in those projects. I plan to continue working on this project even after the class concludes by creating further game pieces and additional boards to swap out. 



One of the other major challenges I ran into came right at the end of the fabrication process. During the drying process, one of the outer walls became warped and prevented me from placing the chessboard into the box. Josh and I spent a significant amount of time troubleshooting ways to fit the board in and settled on cutting out a notch to allow the board to slide in and out of the frame. The solution we came up with also makes it easier to open up the inside of the box, but it added a significant amount of time to the construction process.

Reflection: 

Upon reflection after completing this project, I can clearly recognize how far I've come this semester in learning how to use each of the tools in the Makerspace. I experienced a lot of failures with this project, which set me back a lot, but I feel like I've made a lot of progress and managed to put together a cohesive final project. Additionally, the prototyping gave me a lot of experience with 3D printing and learning how to optimize my prints for stability and durability. The prints I have currently still are quite fragile, but I plan to work on more stable prints in the future when I have more time. If I had the chance to do this project over, I would have definitely worked on printing more simple pieces as there were a lot of challenges in removing the supports from each of the pieces and in repairing any damages. 

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