efindlay-OBDF210

Here it is! My skew hand plane from Lie Nielsen reverse engineered in Rhino. The reverse engineered object was an interesting challenge, it was fairly straight forward with some components and required a lot of creativity with others. I don't think I have ever appreciated the complexity of a screw before now! For the most part I am thrilled with the results, I am still struggling to get the cap iron to boolean union properly but I had to keep going and just leave it as a grouped object for now. This project was an excellent exercise in problem solving, it would be interesting to go back and do it over again just to see how much faster it would be. The rendering went well, except for the time it took, some images were produced fairly quickly but others are taking more than 3 hours even with the step down in resolution. I think it is in part because some of the surfaces are very detailed and I included a bump texture on some of the surfaces to get an unpolished brass look. I am...

Progress Report II: Since last class I have completed (or nearly completed I am still struggling with boolean union for the screws) a few of the more complicated objects. The first is the plane iron itself, the cutting blade for the hand plane.      First I drew the plane iron from measurements I took with my calipers. A few of the curves were hard to measure and the cutting edge was not a perfectly straight line (I need to work on my honing skills!). So after getting the rough shape I brought in an image to check against the measurements I could take and checked online to confirm the angle of the cutting edge. I adjusted the curves and the shaped using both measurements and the photos. Below I have removed a curved slot for the adjustment screw head and tried to show the stages for removing the curved beveled front of the plane iron by drawing a curve, sweeping an angled line, and boolean splitting the edge.    Before I get to the next part...

My progress may look minimal but it was challenging! In particular the curvature of the handle and the threads for the screws. I started with the handle and quickly discovered that it was going to be way faster to sketch out the part and write down all my measurements rather than measuring as I modeled. I still had to go back and confirm some measurements as I was working. I also brought in a photo of the handle to confirm that I had the correct shape. The profile of the handle that I then revolved and filleted the edge. The measurements for the handle and the first screw. Checking the shape against a photo. The finished handle. The next part I tackled was the long screw that holds the handle in place. I used the same approach for the screw as I did with the handle, I drew the profile and revolved it. The next step was to create a spiral curve that went around the neck of the screw, it was a challenge to get the correct spacing/number of steps. I then drew...

Selecting objects for this project was a challenge because I realized that I don't have many mechanical objects. Most of the objects with moving parts that I have are either electrical or too simple for the project so for the first two options I chose objects with limited electrical components. The first object is my dremel. I chose this object partly because I could take it apart without destroying it, I am not that confident with electrical components! It has internal moving parts and a fairly complicated external body that would provide a lot of challenge to reverse engineer.  For the next object I chose my small Cuisinart. It also has multiple moving internal parts as well as some interesting moving external parts. While it is easy to take apart the internal parts would be difficult to model as so many of the wires are attached to the body of the base. I think this object could result in some interesting exploded views and renderings because of the different mat...