[#10] Final Revisions & Preparing to Assemble!


We are in the final stretch of our object design, revising details and preparing to assemble the finished piece. I spent this week making some minor changes to the design for better functionality and planning how I will cut and assemble cleanly.

First, I modified the ball catch at the front to allow for a larger hole that the average person can grab the tiny pinballs from. I had to lower the opening hole to enlarge it and ensure that the hole didn't expose the inner drop ramps behind. This seems to work better and I have left room in case I need to further expand the hole during assembly. The pull knob had to be removed as well since it was too small to assemble. I will be replacing it with a button instead.

Updated Ball Catch Assembly

I also simplified the round bumper design to remove the bump on the top which I found too difficult to assemble at the small scale. They now have a flatter top. This should help make assembling so many of them easier and result in a cleaner look.
Updated Bumpers

Responding to feedback last class and to better align with a real pinball machine, I have increased the height of the legs. The older legs are shown in white against the longer dark legs.
Lengthened Legs

As you may have noticed in the images above, I moved on to planning the colours of the piece and added a 2D design to the upper back box. I coloured the different pieces similar to the colours of the paper I intend to use. 
I titled the pinball machine "Poison Apple," inspired by the dark purple and green colour scheme I went with. In my experience with pinball machines, you can make the theme pretty much anything, with pop culture such as movies and comics being the most popular.
I am hoping to use the laser cutter to cut the back box design pieces and attaching them with a bit of offset from the back box so that they stick out and have a slightly more 3D look.

Back Box Design

A considerable amount of time this week was also spent planning and drawing the tabs for each piece, particularly the more complicated surface objects like bumpers, paddles, and raised obstacles. The round shapes are the most complicated, needing a series of triangle tabs in order to facilitate the curves, allowing the surfaces to secure to each other. Using the laser cutter for these bumper and back box design pieces (at the very least) should save me a ton of time in the end and result in a cleaner look than cutting by hand. I have split out the outlines into pages based on their colours so that I don't miss anything while printing and/or laser cutting.
Triangular Tabs on a Round Bumper Top
Page for Laser Cutter



Even if I have to cut everything manually, I am confident my design will come together nicely. I look forward to the end result.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

[#7] Unrolling 3D Forms for Papercraft

Image
As we prepare for our major papercraft project we are learning how to facet and unroll 3D objects in Rhino. This week we were tasked to create at least 10 different forms in 3D and unroll them into paper templates. To help narrow down what I would like to do for the larger project I created some objects that related to potential ideas from my last post. I also created some unrelated objects in order to explore how various shapes will unroll, if at all.  Simplified Espresso Machine The first form I created is a very basic shape of an espresso machine. I combined and cut away using solid rectangular boxes. When I tried to unroll the entire combined shape it unrolled in a complicated way with areas overlapping. In order to simplify the potential papercraft process I split the form into two parts. This will make it much easier to print and fold. Espresso Portafilter I wanted to try to recreate more of the potential parts of the espresso machine so I attempted a portafilter. I started with
Read more

[#8] Sketch Prototyping

Image
Side view of paper prototype. We are now beginning to model and work through the design-prototype cycle for our final object. I decided to go with the pinball machine. I like the idea of making it so that a small ball can roll down and bounce off of the various bumpers and  objects on the pinball machine surface so I am trying to make it somewhat functional. Similar to my detailed drawing plans on post #6, I don't think that it is feasible to launch a ball as you normally would from the base with the pull knob, so I will likely put a ball-sized hole into the back box on the side. The idea would be that you can drop the ball into there, it can roll down a small ramp and out the top right of the pinball surface and will drop into a collection opening at the front of the model when it's done rolling. I've started modeling the object in Rhino. I started with the shape of the cabinet and back box. I created the cabinet shape by drawing a 2D view from the side then copying and lo
Read more

[#4] 2D Drawing & Extruding: The Rings

Image
  Extruded and rendered designs in purple frosted glass This week's task was to design some rings in 2D then extrude them to create 3D versions. To see the results of my design, I sent in one ring design to be used with the laser cutter. I ended up making 11 ring designs. Only 9 more plus some fire from Mordor and I would have enough to help bring Sauron to power.  2D line designs I tried to make a variety of shapes and designs to explore the 2D design tools and become familiar with them. Most of the designs were created to fit my ring size, the only one that isn't is the one in the top right which was done to a larger ring size. I used a lot of splitting, trimming, and reflecting to combine the various lines and shapes into designs that could be extruded.  Non-rendered, mesh, and shaded view of ring designs. I applied the extrude function to all of the 2D ring designs. All were extruded to 3mm which is the approximate thickness of the acrylic/plastic that they could be cut fro
Read more