Chess Board
Emory and I were partnered up for this project, and at first we wanted to do a cheese grater. However, for health reasons this idea was rejected, so instead we decided on a chess board. The three machines we were going to use were the 3D printers for the chess pieces, the laser for our engraved wooden squares, and vinyl to label the rows and columns. The recycled material was going to be bottle caps so that we could put them on the bottom of the chess pieces for an easy-to-slide design. We started with making inventor files and 3D printing them all at once, setting them up in the makerbot software. We did all 16 white pieces in one printer and all 16 black pieces in another.
Next, Emory obtained a square wooden board from a place I don't remember. Menard's maybe? Anyways, he went ahead and made an illustrator file for the squares so that it was an array of 8x8 squares with every other one shaded to engrave it. Once he made each square 2x2 inches, and started engraving, it began to look very cool.
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After this, we made our vinyl labels to indicate column number and row letter (or vice versa idk). We made a very simple illustrator file with the letters A through H and the numbers 1 through 8. We went to the vinyl computer, opened our file in illustrator, clicked file, Cutting Master 2, Cut Plot, positioned it with the icons and sent it. It took very little time. Then we DIDN'T use transfer tape since wood is porous and the vinyl's adhesive would not overcome the transfer tape's and it simply wouldn't work. So instead we removed each piece on by one and placed them by hand with dental tools after doing some precise measurements. It looks very good! Mr. Willaur helped us position them "professionally," although I think he was trying to recover from the cheese grater stand-off.
For our final step, we incorporated our recyclable bottle caps that we collected from grad parties. However, since the bottle caps I bought weren't good enough since WE weren't recycling them even though they're recyclable materials, we still couldn't use the ones we collected so dutifully because they're beer caps. What a shame. So we sanded off each on tirelessly and quite unnecessarily, and then glued our chess pieces down into the bottle caps. Oh also, at the beginning of our project, WE DID INITIAL RESEARCH that told us the dimensions of a bottle cap so we made our chess pieces with circular extrusions to fit nicely into them. Don't take points off Proctor!! This process took most of our last Idea class ever. Sadness :( But once we finished our chess board was complete! We began to play chess while people photographed us. How fun! I was totally beating Emory when we had to stop to fill out the survey. Good times.
It turned out very nicely!
Summary
All in all I learned how vinyl can stick to wood if you do it by hand! Also, I learned how to create a plane in inventor, which Emory used for the pyramid shaped bishops, and I learned that laser engraved wood is dope! I also learned that Mrs. Proctor has been an awesome teacher this entire semester and that I will miss her. I'm glad she puts up with my sarcasm, and procrastination. You're amazing Proctor!
-Love Evan
-Love Evan