FMP | Week 8 | Day 3

ETA 24 HOURS!

I arrived at school bright and early around 9am to make sure I was able to get onto the laser cutter first. Luckily I did and so I began my day cutting out my pillars. The last and arguably one of the most fundamental pieces of my project. 

I cut them out of the spare bits of mountboard I had left which was so perfect it was almost too good to be true. 

The idea was to cut loads and then layer them together so that I could get the required thickness.

This is the thickness I needed. I used three pieces and glued them together after cutting them all correctly to size

This is how I had to measure them all. Where the pillar would go above the height of the arch is where I would mark and then cut accordingly.  

The plan worked, after cutting them to their desired sizes they fit nicely underneath the arch. It was in fact quite tricky to first work out how I was going to manage to get them all at the right heights. I spent a long time simply staring at them pondering what to do. 

Preview of the pillars underneath the arch.

I went out and spray painted the pillars in white. They were really burnt and they weren't even the correct colour in the first place. 

I put the building on top and glued it down

FINALLY! Everything was starting to come together which made me really happy. I am a bit annoyed that it took me until the last day to get everything in order and get to a stage where it is coming together. 

A preview of the arch over the pillars with the building in the background. 

It was time to finally spray paint the arch. The first time I spray painted it my can ran out and I had to borrow another students can to finish it. Annoyingly, I then dropped it in a lot of dust so it had a large portion of red sandy dust over the top that wasn't coming off as it was only just drying up. I had to make the journey to Hobby Craft in order to get some more spray paint. It was really annoying knowing I was a tad unprepared but I made sure I did everything I could to get it done, And thank the heavens that Hobby Craft was only around the corner!

The only problem with spray painting the arc is that it already looked smooth beforehand, whereas after its paint job the paint seeped into the gaps and pretty much accentuated the amount of holes the material possessed. It made the arch look very bumpy in the finished product. That was a bit gutting because I always felt like I could have done something extra to make sure the exterior were smoother, like for example if I had paper mache'd it it most definitely would have given it a better and smoother finish. However, that is something that can't be done at this point. I was happy with the arch regardless. I guess I am just nit-picking at this point. 

MY FINISHED PIECE!

FMP | Week 8 | Day 2

TWO DAYS TO GO! Making my second model, thankfully this one went well. I say well, the material I was using was perfect. It held strong, the edges in between the windows were firm and held their place.

The only issue that I could point out were of course the burn marks. I think that getting a completely flawless piece cut from the laser cutter is near on impossible, simply because the sheer heat from the laser is going to leave some sort of mark regardless of your material. Fire always leaves a mark. 

The edges were great to be able to glue together as there wasn't an inner material like what you get with the foam board. It isn't very easy to see but on this side of the building especially I have used some corrugated paper to give the sides, that don't have any interesting features such as a window, a bit of character.

This was about as bad as the material got. Not very bad all things considered. Compared to the last model I created the window frames are actually still intact which is a win in my eyes. 

I placed the model onto a foamboard base so that it would be both lighter and allow me to punch in some holes for my scale model figures.

The next things that I needed to do was to incorporate the floors. This was pretty simple. I just did some measurements and cut it with my stanley knife. I knew the rough shape of it, however some of it didn't match exactly. Despite it being a little annoying it didn't matter too much as it wasn't so obvious.

I used some metal railings on the edges. Thankfully I managed to find some with the scale of 1:250 which was perfect for my model. They also looked really nice, though they weren't easy to put in. Because I used foam board for the floors I imagined they'd have been a lot easier to punch in however the pins kept bending because they were so thin.

Some more pictures of my (currently) burnt model:

FMP | Week 8 | Day 1

This week was the last week. Our project is due on Thursday and so I really needed to perfect the arc that was going to be the centrepiece of my model. 

I managed to salvage some more blue foam from Ana and proceeded to line out my arc and begin the cutting. 

This is the shape I had to carefully sculpt out of the blue foam. It was a very important piece and I wasn't allowed to mess it up because the supply of blue foam was running low and I simply didn't have the time to look for more.

I had to stick two pieces together to allow the arc to reach its maximum width. This was something that really got in the way of time. I spent a long time trying to work out how I could manage the width until I thought of this brilliant Idea. I simply super glued two square pieces together and proceeded with my cutting. 

I had to use a pencil to outline it. I decided that being overly careful and cautious couldn't hurt every once in a while, especially at this stage in a very important project. The outlining really helped me in the end as it allowed me to keep track of where I was cutting, reducing the risk of ruining the model.

After I had managed to sculpt the arch out of the foam I had to sand it down because it was very angular and blocky which didn't look nice. I went and bought some sand paper to smooth out the rough edges and sharp corners. 

Here are some images of the finished arch.

FMP | Week 7 | Day 5

Today after my model seemed to fail I had to go out and get some more materials. This time I decided not to use foamboard for the majority of my model. I spoke to one of the technicians in the prototyping room and they advised me on using mountboard. The mountboard was more dense and therefore less flammable under the heat of the laser cutter. Not only was it less likely to catch fire but it was also stronger and so the little bits between each of the windows in my design would stand better and hold stronger. It will also hopefully allow me to glue the model together better as I could use the edges. What I mean by that is when I used the foamboard and the heat inevitably melted the core of the board there wasn't anywhere for the glue to go because the foam inside had melted away from the edges meaning there was a gap. It was really irritating to glue together because I had to use a lot of glue and that made the model very messy.

I bought a couple of a2 sheets of mountboard as well as another a3 sheet of foamboard for the base and the two levels. Hopefully the laser cutting goes well. Fingers Crossed!

FMP | Week 7 | Day 4

*PICTURES OF MODEL THAT FAILED*


*DISCUSS PHOTOS*

This is my prototype. It didn't start out as a prototype, it was originally meant to be the actual model but it really didn't turn out very well. 

AS I had used foamboard the laser was annoyingly too hot for the material I used which caused a large portion of it to burn. This (above) is an image of the front windows that got the worst of the laser's power. The edges of the windows became really brittle and the foam in between the edges had completely melted away. This was the first problem I noticed.

The other problem was the burnt edges. The edges of the foam on the interior of the material had also burned away which made it very hard to piece together.

The finished, "finished" piece looked like it had burned down which was ironic because I had just constructed it. Still, it meant there was room for improvement.

Some more images of my failed model turned prototype.