haha ignore the music in the background

We were partying it up cause it was the last day and only three of us (out of the six) showed up for the final day. It was fun! We finished our little bird and then took a giant 'bird off' video where we all got by our birds and operated them. Haha.
This was an AMAZING class, and get this; (Stef is going to be all OMG NO WAY)...ALL of my classmates and my teacher were from New Jersey!!! No way, right!? Haha. And all within a ten mile radius of each other! It was just GREAT! We all said "hey, let's listen to B0n J0vi" hahahaha.

We all agreed, too, that spending a buttload on art school is stupid; one of the guys (who was an actual mech engineer) said "that's more than Med school!" in shock LOL. Thank you; people from the East Coast (and the rest of the country and world outside of this bubble) have COMMON SENSE and STREET SMARTS. They're are not dummies; in fact, they're sharks and always find a way to succeed no matter what. That's why I love 'em and I keep graduating towards them; similar values.

Anyways....

Three parts and an assembly

The first two are done with some mirroring along the axis (the b@se and the y0ke). The adjusting p!n is done with two extruded pieces and an extruded cut We had to assemble them, then create an assembly and a b0m. The parts are in steel.

playing around with C0nt0urs

Some renders today using C0ntours.

It's very simple to do but looks preedy :)

last day

Today was the last day of 1; the worst class I've ever had in my life
2; hanging out with some incredibly fun, awesome classmates.
Seriously, they made up for how horrible the class was and I made quite a few great friends!
We would all hang out for lunch and talk about everything from the mafia to making guns to what we wanted to do with our lives.
I always remember, when I was in art class/ concept class/whatever, when I was asked "where would you want to work?" I would stare around mindlessly for a few seconds and say "I don't know; I really have no desire to work for a company", and I was pestered over and over because everyone wanted to work for D!sney or Dreamw0rks or C@rtoon Network or some gaming company or whatever. Out of sheer frustration, I'd usually just say M@rvel, because at the time they were the closest to sounding like the artists got any sort of freedom at all (getting royalties for their work, etc)

In this class, someone asked me one day, on our way to lunch together. Rather, the question was "so what are you interested in?" And in a moment of honesty, I said "never having to work for anyone or any company ever again". He smiled and said "oh..you mean millionnairing! Me too..me too" And THEN I knew I was around the same TYPE of people.

These are kids studying "small business" or people who have already started their little thing; one friend has her own l@ser cutting business and another designs jewellery; today he was telling me today that a single rock can sell for 5 mill dollars! And it's tough in the beginning, but you gotta do what you gotta do and keep doing your thing.

Say what you want, but people from fancy expensive schools rarely go on to do their own thing, own their own companies and run things. They end up working for other people. With all their fancy pieces of paper and shiny portfolios, they're lining up, hoping for a call to be some low-rung cog in the machine. And I say this, also, on the heels of the S0ny wages being released. I saw how much the animation supervis0rs and devel0pers make in comparison to the visu@l devel0pment artists and the vis dev salary stuff is abysmally low in comparison (there are links and the actual file is searchable via G00gle.
If I really wanted to be in that field, I would study up the coding from now LOL (just kidding; I think coding is a worthwhile skill that everyone should learn, in any case!) Add that to a market that is already saturated and you get well...desperation. It made me say "that sucks" and then go "oh well (not my problem!)"...
I met a guy who I meet from time to time who is still trying to get into super expensive art school after being rejected THREE times (I kid you not). I feel badly (although not too badly; he's a bit arrogant) and almost wanted to tell him that after he racks up a tonne of debt, and sees what his salary is really going to be like (assuming he immediately gets hired after that).....why not break that box and do his own thing? Because no; it's easier to be a lemming and do what everyone else is doing.

So here I am, wanting to do my own thing, walking off the beaten path, being the 'weird one', and it actually feels okay :)

We got to do whatever we wanted today so I fudged around with my piece. Feels great to work with my hands and make something!

found another video

This was one in which my friend, Hazel, helped me shoot. But then some guy started talking to her about how she could fix her device in the middle of taping me operating mine haha. Sorry. It was quite hectic yesterday as everyone was struggling to put the last touches on for their presentations, etc.

another day, another project

So we ended with a project that took about two weeks. I knew it had to be something that was

able to work so I chose one of the devices I had made (the four b@r link@ge) and scaled it down

to make it. Even then, there were challenges. For example, the first time I scaled it down,

I also scaled down the thickness. Turns out, with my measurements, the scaled down thickness

would have meant that only two strands of plastic would be printed, so that it would break too

easily. So I scaled it up x5. But I made a mistake and the first device didn't work (because of 

my carelessness), fully (the crank and tolerances were fine). The second time it worked, 

and mine was one of the few that actually had movement and tolerances that worked (hurray!)

If you don't use the right tolerances when printing, the printer can default between (say you picked .01) one and round it to a zero (meaning the tolerance would now be 0) and then fuse your parts together. So some people had parts that didn't move because they were fused together.

Also, drainage is important. Our printer printed a part with a base, and then had to sit in a bath 

where the support pieces and base would wash away. So depending on how you built your 

model, there wouldn't be enough drainage and therefore not all the support pieces would wash

away, leaving parts that wouldn't work/ turn. Also, the direction in which you decided

to print the model is important. Printing side ways is not as great for printing circles/circular objects

as it was from the bottom to top position. It's quite interesting stuff. After mine took about 3 hours 

to print, it still had to sit in a bath for about 8 hours to get out the support material/base it printed, along with the model. 

In the video, you can hear a classmate talking about some of the difficulties she had in making her model.

A great learning experience, a lot of work and one in which it was worthwhile to keep things simple.

Two weeks is NOT a lot of time and some people BARELY finished. One guy had a great little device, but it was STILL printing, so he had NO model to present for his final, and took a photo of 

the computer screen file that was printing as he gave his presentation :)

It may be worthwhile in the future for me to buy my own 3D printer. The process is actually not

that complicated and it's great for design. And it's not too expensive (depending on your budget). There are also ones that do metal, which is interesting; a classmate who works in aerospace was telling me about it.

My project is of course, inspired by motion, and the four b@r link@ge system, and ratios used in Computational models which translate into mechanical models to create different characteristics. Oh, and you should check out B0B P0tt's work! It's BEAUTIFUL!!!!