I realise this isn’t going to happen as fast as I’d have liked. The workshop has been inundated with first year projects and the technicians stretched beyond capacity. I have never lathed before (apart from during the mini-me project which was a production line affair) so working out how to do it has been placed into the hands of the technicians. Managed to catch hold of Melvyn today but it seems doing the front and back of a piece of material isn’t as easy as I first thought. It will require turning on one side, and then flipping over, recentre-ing the material, and then turning the other. We’ve decided how we are going to mount the material (‘chemiwood’, 600 grade) onto the lathe’s faceplate and currently 2 pieces of 14mm, or 16mm (didn’t measure) plywood are being glued together to make a base for the lathe material to screw to. I don’t quite know exactly what this is for yet, but I will find out come Monday. I have a slight feeling that my technician is being overly precautions, but then although time is of the essence, I’d rather learn today without getting my arm ripped off and be able to streamline the process a little in the future.

In other news, our new client project involves us designing a product to uphold the tradition of dining as we know it in the smaller-scale setting of the modern home. I have been decoding the John Lewis brand as part of our client project. Tomorrow I will head to the store and take some pictures of the look and feel, the product before making my plan for observing dining habits.

…in concrete. Something I have wanted to do for a while, and hopefully a little something I can offer at my degree show. All this done in 2 hours.

Sketch

Into Rhino. Preferred the more angular pot on the left.

Branding (to be laser cut and embedded into master, finished off with filler and sanded flush – a bit unsure about this step!)

Profiles for lathe turned master

And a rudimentary agitation platform made using a switch, a 7v power adaptor and a motor with an off-centre mass I had knocking around.

So fingers crossed I’ll be able to do a bit of lathing and laser cutting after my presentation, and start getting a silicone mould ready.

So nice to look at… why?

The physical model is now complete and ready to hold all components necessary. I added some pulsing LED’s to backlight the meters and demonstrate an effect although it is missing the IR sensor and vibration motors, which will be added for the final show. We were only required to create a block model for our submission but I wanted to take it a few steps further to the massive detriment of my body’s sleep requirements, averaging about 4 hours sleep from Tuesday through to Saturday and then topping that slog off with an all-nighter on Sunday.

The portfolio has been put together (with minutes to spare and no time for finishing touches) and the whole thing now lies in a crate at Central Saint Martins ready to be presented on Thursday. Phew.

I could have used an extra day but there is a lesson to be learned here: concentrate on achieving the project deliverables rather than chasing a passion for one area of the project. Go back and add more only after the core deliverables have been achieved.

I wont set the context in this post as I think the project deserves a proper portfolio update to reveal the story behind it, but here are some evaluative pages from the project portfolio.