Chess pieces

I saw something where a kid was layering cut circles for something. I immediately got the idea for chess pieces.

This was scrap quarter inch clear acrylic that I had found. It clearly was not quality material. It warped every cut, and there were bubbles inside the acrylic.
There was just enough scrap to do two pieces, so I did the Castle and King.

Maybe later I will do a whole chess set and board.

While I was a the Tech Shop I began practicing making a Hoberman sphere I just want to make a wheel, not a whole ball. So far so good. Also this wooden box was in the trash can.. I had to pick it up

Koi fish acrylic puzzle

This project started out as a wooden 3D puzzle that I had bought 5 years earlier, that I always wanted to do something with, but I knew I didn't have the tools yet, so I never opened it out of the box.

Until now..
I first scanned all 4 ply wood sheets into a scanner. I imported those into Corel Draw. It took two weeks to trace every single piece!
Some of the pieces I changed cause they looked better another way.

And a half hour of laser cutting time.

Once everything was cut I had to peel off the film on every piece both sides, and begin putting it together. I did not have instructions on how it went together, in total I was there for 7 hours.

After I finally put it together I decided I wanted different colored scales. I had neon orange and black. I estimated on how much and what size scales were needed.

It was starting to look like a real Koi

There wasn't many people in the Tech Shop that day, but all of them stopped to take photos of it and begged me to make them one. A tour went by and a woman stopped to talk to me. She said that could easily sell for $180.
If I attempted to mass produce this I don't know if I would ship it in parts for people to try to assemble themselves, or take hours to assemble it myself.

I took it home and couldn't wait to shine a light through it. Cooler than what I was hoping for!

I also put it by a Black Light. This photo doesn't do it justice, the neon orange looked soo much more amazing than this.

One day I'll make another

ID tags for USBs, zippers, keys, etc

After getting this AMAZING NEON YELLOW/GREEN acrylic I had to find something to do with it that I could have on me.

I thought of making mini ID TAGS for myself and all my classmates. 

we rely on our flash drives so much in class, and we share a giant computer lab with so many students, the last thing we want is to forgot our flash drive in a computer and walk away.

I started with the hexagon shapes, then had other ideas.

I found an assortment of clips.

Then I decided to label a shared apartment key, so we wouldn't get confused what it was and somehow lose it.

clipboards

It took me a really long time to re draw all of Arizona's highways and rivers. pretty sure I did it twice cause I'm still learning this program. this is cut on the same quarter inch acrylic material as the over sized dog tags.

After I had a nice vector layout I etched it on acrylic clip boards. It was a last minute decision to etch the counties instead of the rivers of Arizona.
I etched it backwards on the back of the clip board so if there was a paper in the clipboard being used, a pencil wouldn't get caught in the grooves making a mess on your paper when you are writing.

Swipe! Class project

So it was a summer Design class project to create a screen that had 2 swivels. The the Following summer class we had to modify our first design for the real world. I created this one. This is a all-in-one menu plus register for restaurants. This lil gadget will be at every table in a restaurant. Sadly it will eliminate the position of the server, but I am told that is already happening. Their new jobs will be food and drink runners.

I named my product SWIPE because of the swipe action on the credit card. My favorite part is the stylus pen that sticks out from the top of the display. Also the screen is detachable from its "charging" station. It's held on by a super strong neo rear earth magnet. I wish I got to 3D print this sucker at the Tech shop. Instead I had to print this at school and it was $97 to print!! And I had to pay for it! My Goodness, ASU what a rip off! 

Side note- I had no idea things like this already existed, people kept saying "Oh, Chili's has something similar"  I'm like What?!?! I haven't been to Chili's in years why didn't anyone tell me that before I went through with this project? :(

Parrot multi-tool

 While my teacher was talking about something important, I got an idea for another multi-tool. this one is a parrot with 5 different tools.

• Seat belt cutter
• Oxygen key
• Bottle opener
• Hex wrench hole
• Pry bar or blade

I had EMS in mind. I wanted it small enough to fit in a pocket or hang on some keys, but I'd also like it to fit nicely in the hand and feel usable. also preferably I'd like it to be able to stand by itself.
I need to figure out how to make the seat belt cutter. I want it to be strong like an actual knife. I will probably have to find a good steel and learn how to sharpen and heat treat it. This will be a lengthy process

Fish multi-tool

After seeing many multi-tools in the shapes of animals on Instagram I decided I wanted to make one myself.  I knew a fish's mouth and tail could have the right shape for a hex nut. I wasn't sure what to put in between so I put more hex nut holes in. Every tool I've seen has a bottle opener so I decided to put that apart of the fin. Normally the eye of an animal is a place for a lanyard loop. My fish's eye is either a lanyard hole, or a hex wrench socket. That would be up to the users choice.

This was my first time using the Tech Shops CAD programs. I have the perfect tolerances and dimensions with the plastic pieces cut from a laser cutter. but when I take the same file and use it with the Water Jet Cutters outside, the holes shrink some how. so I am going to have to do some remolding to adjust for the difference.

This was done in mid July of 2015