Week 10

Computer Controlled Machining

This week's project I have decided to make a rocking chair that is basically and adult crib (that you can get out from on your own). I have a habit of sitting terribly in chair i especially love to sit sideways and I feel like rocking chairs help ease anxiety and are king of nostalgic so I want to combine these two ideas.

Documentation

Brainstorming Designs

So while i was super locked in (on pinterest) I found a lot of cool inspo pics that I want my chair to look like. Using those inspo pics I am going to sketch a cool design. Let's see what I can come up with I will be back with an update. Okay so I sketched out four ideas:

  • the first idea was this hald circle that basically rocks back and forth but it seems kinda uncomfortable to read on.
  • The second idea was to hald a chair that kinda follows the countour of how you want to sit.
  • The third idea is a circle that is basically slices that fit in together
  • the fourth idea is a mix of the secound and the third using the shape of the second and the construction of the third
  • The fifth idea which i didn't sketch is basically a lounge rocking chair that seems to look like the second but with a curved bottom.

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    I am thinking about cutting out a mini version of my deisgn with a lasercutter to see how feasible it is

    The Design

    The design I am chosing is the fourth mixed in with the fifth. The construction is going to be slotting into itself with a rocking bottom curved to the counter of the ideal sitting shape pictured below.
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    I am going to sketch out the design on Onshape in 3D and then I am going to see if it is feasible to fit it in a 4ftx8ft piece of wood. I finished all the CAD.
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    I am a bit worried about two things. 1 - that it will tip over once I sit on it and that the rocking won't be that great. 2 - That it won't be that comfortable with all the wood sticking out. But I am thinking about making a cushion for the top anyway so it should be fine. I made sure to make the thickness of the wood a thickness that I can easily change. I think I made it to the correct cut size so although the extrusion is technically the wrong depth the cuts are the right size. I used a thickness of 0.46in.

    Does it FIT?!

    I am now going to make a new sketch to see if all the pieces of wood fit in the constraint of 4x8 wood. It FITS!!! I am not sure how to make this into a DXF I think creating a new sketch and projecting everything onto it. that idea did end up working. After I finished the main DXF I decided to check out the insttruction on the arch shop tutorial. After reading that they mentioned that the parts should be bigger than 6x12 but my smaller parts are like 3.5x17 which i am not sure if it is too small. Apart from that i had to make a new DXF with all the inside points so that the cam can do the dog bone method so that the corners will be cut properly. I am going to send the DXF to archsop now to see if I can maybe cut it tonight or tomorrow. WOO! I ran into a small issue. When I make a new sketch with only the points It doesnt let me export just that
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    Time to Cut

    I am currently at the arch woodworking shope getting ready to cut my pieces. There was a small mixup with scaling and the thickness of the notches in my wood. I also completely forgot about three of the wodden slabs so I had to add them in in the end. For the Master CAM we are starting with drilling holes and then doing the countour of everything on the outside. The cutting was wildly succcessful.
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    Everything came out great and it popped right out of the wood. I was able to roughly assemble everything and I plan to go back on tuesday to sand it all.
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    I am also reading into how to paint it. Maybe I will be able to make it look really nice. It ended up coming out really nice but there were two main problems: the first being that it was very back heavy so I sat down in it and although I technically did tip over it was safe.
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    I need to figure out a way to add more weight in the front. The other thing is that it did seem a little smaller than expected and i was not able to see if it could support my neck but overall it was pretty comfortable all things considered.

    Finishing - Sanding and Painting

    I started and finished the sanding of my pieces but it turned out to be mostly filing. I learned that wood is pretty bad quality. As I was filing chunks kept breaking off. Then I had the truly genius idea of attempting to paint my chair. Horrendous the stuff of nightmares. The paint was supposed to be light green but turned out aqua, which i'm not complaining about because I love that color but the wood did NOT take to the paint. It came out all splotchy and didnt't really cover the wood very well.
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    I had an image of super crisp painted wood but unfortunately that did not happen. Honestly the final project ended up looking nice.
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