What?
For our final project were were basically given a blank canvas to make whatever we want. The only rule was it had to be made in the innovation center using the machines we have worked on and it had to reduce reuse or recycle otherwise wasted materials. Other than that we basically had free range to use any wasted materials we could find and make anything we wanted with them.
IDEA.
It took me a long time to come up with a really good idea for this but after surfing the web for I while I found a picture of a flower vase made from some scrap wood and old beer bottles and decided I was going to recreate it. In the picture as you can see to the right, it had a bunch of bottles and was really big. Since I was making it to put on the table at my house I decided to use just 3 bottles instead of a bunch. I also began thinking about a design I could put on the bottles or the wood to make it look even nicer. Once I had my idea, I had a lot of work ahead of me.
I started by finding some bottles I could use. I found three matching ones at my house that used to be filled with hard soda, so i peeled of the label and washed them to use for my project. I knew I was going to use the router to create some circular indents in the bottom piece of my wood for the bottles to sit and cut holes in the top piece that the tops of the bottles would stick up through. So I measured my bottles and decided to make the bottom indents 2.5 inches in diameter and the top wholes to be inches in diameter. I also designed it so each bottle would be .5 inches apart with 1.25 inches extra on the ends and .5 inches extra on the side. I also measured the height of each bottle and decided the bottom indents would be .4 inches down and the side pieces would be 7.5 inches tall. I made a really rough sketch of this on graph paper so my project could be approved and then went straight to inventor.
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While I made the pieces in inventor I decided to add a little more detail to my project by making the corners fit together like a puzzle instead of straight on I also made the drill holes in inventor so the router could cut them out for me. I later regretted this because I didn't leave any wiggle room and it was super difficult to get them to fit together.
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Once I had all my pieces in inventor I uploaded them to fusion 360 and added drill paths, 2D adaptive clearing paths and 2d contour paths so the router would know what to do. After I post processed the gcode I went and got the wood pieces I needed from the scrap in the woods shop and headed to the router.
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I cut all the pieces out and they were all fine except like I said before they didn't fit together very well. I tried to and them down but it was taking a long time and when I tried to fit them together with straight force of of the pieces that was part of the "puzzle" corner at the bottom broke of. Then tried to cut out new ones but for some reason could not get them to turn out right so had to give up and use the broken one since it was only a little bit broken. It actually worked out in the end because it looks kind of like a handle notch on the bottom and didnt look out of place at all because both sides matched.
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Once I had my physical pieces and they fit together. I needed to add design to my project. Originally I thought I might decorate the bottles with vinyl and the laser but after seeing the wood and having it in my hands I decided to laser engrave the tops and sides. I put together a cut little design in illustrator quick. Similar but not the same for the tops and side. Then used the small laser to engrave each part.
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Then I drilled the holes in the side parts. The router drilled the holes in the top and bottom parts but I had to drill through the sides so the screw would hold them together. Once that was done, I screwed the top to the sides. Then I had to screw the bottom part on while the bottles were in place because they don't fit in after it all put together. This way the bottles wont fall out when it is moved around or carried.
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Then all that was left was to put some water in the bottles and add a flower:).
What learned
Well just in surfing the web to find a project I learned how creative people have been with finding ways to reuse and recycle different things like water bottles, wine bottles, paper towel rolls, scrap wood, old tin cans, old buckets and countless other things. Although many people claim that global warming is "fake news" there is also a lot of people making a conscious effort to help reduce their waste. I also learned more about the machines in the innovation center. Specifically I got a lot of time on the router and learned its better to start with a piece of material that is bigger than you want the end product to be so you don't have to worry about getting it perfectly lined up with a corner. This project also taught be about failing and how things don't always work the first time or they way they are suppose to. It was a really frustrating process but in the end I was happy with my flower vase and what I learned to make it.