Design blog @chanmyoung - Tumblr Blog

Project 1 Summary

In this project, I chose balsa wood for my experiments. I tried to explore more about property of balsa wood from what I already know. Although I found out more about balsa wood, I think I haven’t pushed the limitation of balsa wood further enough. I did enjoyed this project doing all the experiments.

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Final Drawing

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Final iteration

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iteration 3

In this iteration, I was looking at fragility and lightness of balsa wood. To express these properties, i used blunt side of craft knife. For fragility, I scratched the surface against grain and by that it was creating a lot of chip even though i wasn't putting much strength to it. Chips on the surface created rough texture. On the other side of tile, i tried to make it look furry to express the lightness. I scratched along the grain multiple times to create soft chip.

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iteration 2

For this iteration, I was looking at grain and fragility. For grain, since balsa woods have lot of linear grain that does not form certain pattern, I linked obvious grain and carved them out. For fragility, i used finger nail again and scratched the surface along the grain.

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Iteration 1

The property that i was focusing on this iteration was fragility. To express it i ripped the surface with finger nail. Since balsa wood is pretty soft, it was possible to do it and from it i got rough texture on the surface that looks like broken piece of wood. On the other side of tile, I sanded it thin to see if light can come through it. It did work on the very strong light but It didn't really worked on small or weak light because I couldn't get it thin enough since it's very fragile.

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For this one, I scratched the surface of balsa with the blunt side of craft knife then slightly burned the surface. The chips on the surface from scratching burned out and left black dots on the surface.

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In this experiment, I used steam iron to see what hot steam would expect on balsa wood. Part that is steam ironed, turn darker then before but the part where the steam was coming out directly on balsa was brighter than other parts that are steam ironed.

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In this experiment, I hammered balsa wood. One thing i found out is that balsa would snap a lot easier than what i expected.

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Summary

The joint that I was given at the beginning of this project was ankle. From ankle, I could get idea of pivot for my models. My models have movement of lock that is linked with pivot and I used shift to create pivot on various position and to create more locks. Through this project, I learnt more about ergonomic interface and behaviour of new material.

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Final drawing

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Final model #2

This is my Final model. I used thicker wire to appeal role of wire more. Rubber material is used on lock on the sides to give stronger lock. It has interface on lock, therefore it is easier to pull out from lock.

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