This week's assignment was more like an arts class project which was very relaxing and nice although the chemicals that I was about to use were a bit toxic. I decided to make a simple tray that I could use in my office. I wanted the design to be different from what Neil showed us during class. Normally composite pieces were meant to be over 3 layers to make it very stiff and hard, but I wanted to make something that was more natural and that best benefits from the texture of the beautiful fabric we had in the shop.

I cut the fabric in long stripes and happened to really like the patterns it formed and decided to make my try in thoese shapes.

I realised that the sissors that are meant for cutting fabric are REALLY good. They are quite heavy but because of the weight, they allow precision and stablization when cutting. I liked it a lot!

People who were working with me got done with their pieces around the same time so we decided to share the vacuuming bag. Mine is at the left to the farthest. After about 7-8 hours, I went back down to get my piece and it is shown in the right image above.

One thing to be really careful when working on this project is to NOT put too much epoxy when putting objects into the vacuum bag. We ruined one of our expensive vacuuming bag. It is actually the best to avoid making something that has a possibility of containing epoxy. In other words, something convex rather than concave is safe.

Sadly, because I made the walls too thin compared to the bottom layer, I broke three of the corners while I was trying to separate it from the blue base foam cre. However, because the fabric was well glued and stuck together that it didn't completely break away from the main body.

As I had planned I decided to use it for my office!

Anyhoo!

I am very happy with my outcome even though it looks very simple (and very simple to make). In the future, I hope to play with the material and texture more for sure.

WEEK 9: COMPOSITES

Part1: Preparing Materials

Detaching from the Blue Foam