Press-fit Kit

 

assignment

design, make, and document a press-fit construction kit

 

my goal

I decided to create parts to teach my two-year-old daughter about modularity.

 

so, I have created two designs:

design a: where modules are standard (rectangles) but connectors change (triangle, square, pentagon)

 

design b: where connectors are standard (square) but module change (square, triangle, pentagon)

 

design a

 

with design a, I want to demonstrate to her how simply changing connectors changes the architecture

 

 

design b

 

with design b, I want to demonstrate to her how changing modules while keeping connectors unchanged changes the level of complexity without changing the architecture

 

final frontier

the final frontier, of course, is  to show how very complex shapes (too complex to survive) have to have both complex modules and connectors

 

 

process notes

i started this project as a complete novice (well, apart from being an engineer who knows principles of engineering drawing, but that is not necessary). most of my effort went into knowing learning vector drawing software (inkscape), fab tools, laser cutter, and mercurial (for version control).

 

i had to overcome three problems:

a)   when i converted .png to epilog file for laser cutter the first time, the lines got a bit jagged. i later learned that i had to set the resolution right to avoid that

b)  when path was created from the epilog file, i realized that i had placed the pieces too close to each other, so in some cases lines separating two pieces was absent. this problem was fixed by re-spacing the shapes

c)   through trial-and-error, i also realized something i should have in the first place: the connectors had to be large enough that when two modules are connected to a single connector they donŐt collide

 

i tried one shape of each type before replicating them. below are the progression of files i created.

 

project files

ver1

ver2

ver3final