Competition Entry

Here is a link to my entry in the Anno Books Student design competition

http://annobooks.com/index/competition/category/3/page/4/id/640

If it scores highly in this round it will go further and be judged by designers i think, but I'm not holding my breath. 

Model update. Hold your breath..

Okay guys, this is a long one so bare with me here.  Where I left off in the last post I had just fixed up a few thing that i weren't happy with and was ready to redo the carbon fibre.

Before I get into that, I got the final piece that I needed to be printed.  This part is to allow me to bend the display screen cover to the profile that i want.  The polycarbonate screen cover will be heated and then sandwiched between these two parts in a vice and left to cool.  

The quality of this print is far inferior to the previous print where I highlighted the pins.  You can see that pieces have chipped off and the grain on the flat surfaces is extremely course.

On to the carbon parts.  In the last post I had painted the molds and sanded them to a smooth finish.  In order to further fill surface imperfections and allow the carbon parts to be ejected once the resin cures I had to wax the molds.

Good old Mothers.  Prep cut, polish and carnuba wax.

Here the molds are waxed and ready to go.

I would have waxed these at least 10-15 times each, so they did end up with a mean sheen :)

primer filled the display mold to compensate for the horrible quality of the print.

The fun bit, or so you'd think.  In the image below I'm fairly sure the resin has been applied to the molds and is waiting to semi cure before applying the carbon and a wetting coat of resin.  At first the resin didn't want to stick and was forming little pools.  At this stage I was freaking out and was hurrying to try and even it out.  I eventually got the resin to cover the molds consistently, and left them to semi cure.

The resin dried to a 'tacky' stage far sooner than I expected so again, freaking out, I had to apply the carbon before there was no 'tack' left in the first coat of resin.

Got it all together and clamped in the mold.

Pegs :)

While I'd had some left over resin I quickly waxed a piece of stray timber and sloped a bit on.  I later pull this off to see how easy it gave way and too my surprise, it came off with extreme ease, filling me with a bit of hope, false hope it turns out.

It came time to remove the carbon from the molds and surprise surprise, it didn't just fall out of the mold when a stray breeze wafted past.  Half/all of the paint from in the mold stuck to each carbon part.  Not the end of the world, as the shape of the parts would still be accurate, but annoying never the less.

(I do have a rad video, that goes for the better part of an hour, that features me struggling trying to get these things apart but turns out a video that length in 720P is 2 and a bit GB so i wasn't about to upload it lol.)

I managed to cut myself two or three times, each time adding another pair of gloves of differing materials.  Additionally I wasn't stoked about the fact that there was tiny carbon fibres flying around the place and lots of them all over my skin, but hey my lifespan isn't going to reduce itself.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

So after a bit of cleaning/scraping/light sanding...

This is what was left...  Cant complain about that...

Time to make these buggers fit with the rest of the family.

Dremel time. (Insert darth Vader joke/line here)

The fit was okay, but not good enough, so i whipped out the trusty bog.

Even though the photos don't look flash, the fit is decent, and i need to stop somewhere or id go on forever trying to fix imperfections.

(Still kicking myself for not using the abs printer for these parts, the fit would have been perfect straight off the bat, grrrr.)

So the shell parts are currently sitting downstairs with hopefully the last coat of primer they will ever receive, then it's colour/clear buff and polish, simple.

I have definitely spent a few hours on this sucker now.  I will be very happy when its sitting in its box on a pedestal with the ambient glow of talksteer...

Looking at the time, I should go to bed, have to leave for work at 8am.  I'll see you all tonight for Mike's.  Night night.

Brad

Can Span

Now i know this isn't the biggest or highest bridge in the world or anything, but it is mighty impressive and better than anything i could do. These photos do not do the size of the thing justice. It is very hard even having seen it to understand how big it is. Also these are not my photos, they were taken from http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?p=1297708

This image comes close to showing the size of the bridge 

This gives an idea of scale, those are people in the box and you can see how tiny that is in the picture above. 

Anyway just something i was amazed at and finally found some good pictures of. 


In case you were wondering these are the highest and longest if you believe Wikipedia

 Highest Bridge in the World 
Look at the little baby bridge underneath 

Millau Viaduct

(almost don't believe this picture)

 Longest Bridge in the World 
Akashi-Kaikyō Bridge

Model Progress

So here is the first of the silicone inlays going on the handle. Ignore all the bog but once it is all sanded and painted it should look alright. Also I have orange silicone pigment order to colour the inlays correctly so it should give a good result hopefully.

Let me know you think...

A small Blog about Bog

As some of you know upwards of 40% of my front bumper is bog as a result of one of my "How hard can it be?", "that seems like a good idea" and "I'll learn as i go" moments. For once, even in hindsight, it was a good idea, however there were some decisions made due to both lack of experience and haste which may have resulted in about 2kg of both fiberglass reinforced and regular bog being applied to the now gaping holes in my bumper. While i still classed this small LARGE project as a win, at the time of completion, its true value was yet to be exposed. 

 Before

What Have I Done? 

 Bog Applied to Fiberglass Matting

 Fiberglass Matting 

 Before

Starting to wonder if this was the right decision 

  Looking much better after many layers of Primer Filler 

End result, please excuse the paint colour, one day i will colour match it correctly... or just sell it.. 

During the hours, probably 40+ of bogging, sanding, priming i am not ashamed to say that i became a master in the art of applying, sanding and shaping bog. Well, maybe master is a little to far, but i became better than most... well actually i was just better than when i started. Today however, it was good to finally see that after considerably shortening my life, through ingestion of an unsafe level of tiny, sharp airborne fiberglass particles my new found skills would not go unused. 


So, long story short while sanding the fragile end posts of my desk one decided to jump out of my usually safe hands and as a result, one piece quickly became three. I did not take any pictures of it in this sad state, most probably because it was a memory i did not want to preserve in digital form. I wish i had now though, as the offending pieces sit before me on my desk, reunited in one glorious piece. 


On to the images....... 

 While the Bog was drying, next to my old buddy, 3M Primer Filler 

 Sorry about the poor quality pictures but for those of you who saw it this afternoon you can appreciate how far it has come. Anyone else, just take my word for it, it was in a very bad way.

I also bogged the printer part of this one as it will be the passport reader and needs not slots

Well, that got out of hand fast, thanks for reading if you got this far. Lets hope i can put these skills away on the shelf, at least until this model is long finished and have another "how hard can it be" moment.