How To Make Almost Anything Neil Gershenfeld

BENJAMIN VILLA

MIT Center For Bits And Atoms


Fab labs share an evolving inventory of core capabilities to make (almost) anything, allowing people and projects to be shared. These are my projects.

Build Something Big-

10.20.21

assignment group assignment do your lab's safety training test runout, alignment, speeds, feeds, materials, and toolpaths for your machine

individual assignment make (design+mill+assemble) something big (~meter-scale) extra credit: don't use fasteners or glue extra credit: include curved surfaces

[1] To design something big, at a meter scale, I decided to design and make a stool for my kitchen counter. After moving into Cambridge, I still haven’t purchased (or found) a stool, so I decided to make one. Our initial task was to make something out of a single sheet of OSB board, however, as I was planning on using the stool long term, I decided to buy my own wood and leave the OSB for a future making project. As I’m used to Rhino, I wanted to learn something new, so I started out trying to learn Fusion 360, but quickly grew frustrated and reverted to Rhino (old habits die hard). I wanted to build a chair that was inspired by the designs of Artigas Villanova, a Brazilian architect I admire, so I looked at some of the designs he used in his columns, to think about the legs for the chair. Using Rhino allowed me to design the chair I wanted, but after exhaustive search, I found that there was no quick way to parametrize the design in Rhino (without using Grasshopper). Sticking to Fusion 360 might have been a better decision.

Considerations:
-Use software that allows you to parametrize your designs. This will help in case you want to adjust values /need to adjust values based on material thickness.
-When using wood glue to stabilize a construction clamping is a key aspect. To clamp properly do it in an alternating manner so that the clamping is rigid, and you limit the degrees of freedom while the glue dries.
-Leave your object clamped up for 24 hours.

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