When you think of a pencil case you think of a flat slim box that opens up with colored pencils. Well for my concept I wanted the pencil box to at first appear to be slim and flat and open up into a spiral formation hopefully generating creativity.

I first made a single 4 sided slim and elongated cube just wide enough to fit a colored pencil with a bottom piece in AutoCAD I then replicated this piece 8 times for 8 different colors. These individual cubes were cut out on the laser cutter. Toward the bottom of each cube a hole was placed on the 2 side faces so that when assembled the dowel could pierce through all the cubes holding the entire thing together. At the top of each cube on the same 2 sides are two extremely small holes placed so that a piece of string could connect every cube in order to limit its distance and hold the spiral in place through tension when the pencil box is opened up. The final assembly design was the top lid of the case which has 2 wings on it and when taken off becomes the bottom base to which the pencil case slides into to hold the spiral form. The case is colored red and white to commemorate Carnegie Mellons colors and the materials used were chipboard, magic marker, wooden dowels, and string.

The main idea for the lamp started off with the idea of having 3 different levels of transparency be produced in a single lamp. As the lamp twists more or less light is let in and allowed to pass through the translucent paper depending on its orientation.

This was an extremely lengthy process. All of the pieces were drawn in AutoCAD and then cut on the laser cutter and assembled. First I began with a equilateral triangle and made 3 distinct arms that were all the same length. I then took this piece and made slots for the thin translucent paper to fit into that were inch deep. After making the slots on each side of each arm I multiplied the tripod black piece and rotated it one third of a turn to the left. I made each 17 pieces rotating from the range of the fist and last piece. After cutting all the pieces the lamp was assembled by hand with no glue only tension and a thin metal rod to keep all the black tripod pieces equally spaced as they rotated. I used black mat board and white translucent paper for this project.

The initial idea of a Valentines Day gift got me really excited for this project. I found an image of a little boy and girl leaning in for a kiss and decided that I would use this for the bases of my project.

First I took the image and imported it into AutoCAD. I then traced the image of the boy and girl using a poly line tool and then removed the picture leaving me with a tracing of their silhouettes. I then separated the boy and girl who were attached at the lips. I took the boy and rotated his hips 2 degrees up from his leaning position and then scaled him by a factor of 1.2. I then sequential did this to each one so the boy would grow to be standing straight up and 7 inches tall by the end of this multiplication process. I then did the exact same thing to the girl. Stay in sequential order I the overlapped each individual boy piece one half inch from his back heal. Going in order allowing the boy to shrink and lean in each piece was set off from the next by a half inch. I did the same thing with the girl as she came in from the opposite direction. After creating this in AutoCAD I then printed it on the laser cutter having each individual piece cut with the outline of its overlap to the next pieced scored onto the acrylic. This way when assembling and gluing the pieces together I knew exactly how to line them up and how much to overlap them. In the end the boy and girl are multiplied and scaled down eventually meeting in the middle where the tension of their lips holds up a rose. The material used were acrylic and the cut settings were 100% power, 5% speed, 500 frequency to cut and 80% power, 15% speed, 500 frequency to score.

This project had to do with the idea of materials and motion. I took a picture of a surface, a crashing wave, and manipulated its 3 dimensional look by pushing and pulling the paper through a series of folds. This in return creates a new surface and gives a unique way of thinking about the surface.

To start off I found an image of a crashing wave. I again put it into auto cad as a raster image and Overlaid a grid on top of the picture breaking it into half inch vertical pieces. I then began to follow the aesthetic motion of the wave lining distinct movement in the picture with horizontal curves breaking the image into horizontal unique variation. These horizontal lines at different heights on the vertical axis would create a motion, surface and response to the wave 3 dimensionally. I then printed an image of the wave 13 x 17 and put the piece of paper in the laser cutter to cut it into vertical pieces and score the horizontal ones so it could be folded and extruded. I also made in AutoCAD support pieces that matched the vertical and horizontal extrusion of each vertical piece cut by the picture to help support the flimsiness of the paper and hold each piece in bent positions to create the new surface. After each pieces was bended and glued to its support the were all lined up next to each other as if it were a whole picture again and this time with a new quality was brought to the picture. This project used cardstock material for the support pieces which laid perpendicular to the strands of paper with the image of the wave on them.

This project was most difficult and took several iterations to get correct. I started off an idea that my mother made me think of. Every holiday she collects 4 decorations that signify her 4 children and are seasonal gifts so that they are changing every couple months. For Christmas she has 4 elves with our names on it, for winter she has four snow men and so on. So I though I would make her an Easter basked with 4 bunnies representing her 4 children and the colors of their colleges/high school which will pop out of an Easter egg.

A common theme has been touched on through these entire projects and that is the tracing of an image in AutoCAD which was done in this project also. I took a bunny rabbit and traced it in AutoCAD and altered it to make 2 boys and 2 girls, I then printed them on cardstock paper on the laser cutter and colored them in. In AutoCAD I also made a set of gears. When a crank is turned a circular gear with a sting will pull back the top of an Easter egg and push a bunny out of the egg, and they retract when a full 360 circle has been achieved.

This project was the most fun yet.  First we started off by creating a design that could A. be translucent for LED lights or glow sticks to light up in the dark, and B. to have a male and female part so you could build and create whatever forms you wanted to glow in the dark.  So after we created a 3D version in sketch up we sent it to the 3D printer in the code lab.  We designed the male and female pieces to have removable bottom pieces so you can insert the LED lights and have your choice of color.  The bottom piece was secured with magnets.  The 2 pieces can snap together on any of their 4 sides because they are exactly the same and can be placed 2 different ways vertically. 

The next step was to cast the 3D printed pieces in a 24 hour molding rubber.  After creating a container to suspend the pieces in, we poured the rubber in the containers and let it set for 24 hours.  It is crucial that the container to which the rubber in being poured has no leaks because even if the smallest leak is present the rubber has a long time to seep out little by little before fully drying.  After the rubber molds were dried the pieces were strategically cut out and a hold was created at the top of each mold to pour the 7 minute plastic mixture in.  The plastic must be poured almost at a dribbling rate because the piece was so thin (in order to make sure it was translucent).  After duck taping the entire rubber mold the plastic is poured and a half hour later the piece is finalized.

The original concept for this project was to create a form that was extremely thin and continuous giving the feeling of a sea or motion of water.  The piece would straddle a 9 inch wide by 5 inch deep opening located on the wall blocking my pool from my hot tub.  Water passed through this opening from the hot tub which sits 3 feet above the pool and then gracefully falls into the large body of water.  This piece I created will channel the water interfering with its flow and create a design for the water to fall into the pool.  In each opening located in the casted piece a candle will be placed to reflect off both bodies of water and the water fall illuminating the casted pieces actions at night.

As I mentioned before the original design was to look like the 2 smaller photos’s located above but I still have not found a material to cast and mold with that would allow it to be that thin.  The design changed but the piece still serves the same functions.  I took aluminum flashing and cut strips of 9 inches long by 3 inches high and folded them back onto themselves.  I made 20 of these and shoved them into a foam core piece which had a printed AutoCAD underlay in order to create a symmetrical organized piece.  I then poured quick Crete around the aluminum pieces and let it set for 24 hours.