Week 0

Final Project CAD

Brainstorming

Ideating is hard, like really really hard. How are you even supposed to know when you have a good idea or if what you're planning is even possible to build with the design constraints you have. As such I decided to simply combine two things I really love, pancakes and 3D printers. How cool would it be to eat a syrup covered replica of the Eiffel tower? I know I'm not alone in finding that prospect intriguing. My final project idea is to bring baked goods into the third dimension as an additive practice rather than a subtractive one, (I was mainly thinking pancakes, but it can't be that hard to extrapolate and change based on batter).

As a child I had an EZ-bake Oven, which is this device that cooks batter using a 100 Watt lightbulb, my product would get a similar name of EZ-Make Oven for its ability to both cook and make complex edible shapes whilst maintaining the shape of a traditional oven.

CADding

My CAD method of choice is Fusion360, it is quite simple to use, works on my computer, and can even be made to create primitive animations. The oven shape is quite simple and easy to produce with shapes like rectangular prisms and cubes, but the CAD got more complicated when I added the printer head, axis, and batter box.

cad picutere of basic oven cad picutere of finished oven cad picutere of animated oven

Being Realistic

Before considering the mechanical/electrical implications of this projuct and all the little things I'll need to get just right I'd like to say that I quite love the idea of a 3D printing oven, but in practice it seems really difficult.
FDM printers work by taking a solid material, expending energy to liquify it, and allowing it to cool bak to a solid. SLA printers work by curing a specific layer of liquid resin in a tank with a laser and building on the layers. SLS printers use a powdered "filament" and fuse the powder together with lasers. My proposed project would start with a liquid filament (like SLA) but have to put down layers of it (like SLS and FDM) it would also have to cook/cure the layers (like SLA and SLS) without burning previous layers.


sad picture of animated oven

If I want to do this project idea I definitely need to put a lot more thought into how the cooking process will be done, and how the axiis will work. This involves observing more types of 3D printer technology and finding out what works and what doesn't for my goal and medium.