We were delighted to host Theo for his work experience placement. He was certainly kept busy during his time with us, completing multiple design tasks, coding and 3D printing. He even found time to write about his experience below.
The first thing I did in my work experience was develop a 3D-printable design for a piece of plastic that would hold together straws to make a geodesic dome. I had to make six failed designs before getting to the one design that worked. My first design failed as it would not flex to create the dome. My second design did not work as it wouldn’t flex and the straws don’t fit on it. My third design failed as the straws wouldn’t fit and it doesn’t flex. My fourth design went wrong as it wouldn’t flex and the straw holders were too small, meaning the straws would just fall off. My fifth design did not function as it would not flex – only crease. Also, the straws kept falling off. My sixth design failed as the straws kept falling off due to the straw holders being straight. My seventh design was finally successful – it could flex and the straws would fit and stay on the holders as I added a curve into the holders to keep the straws on.
The second thing I did in my work experience was develop a method to make the straws. It took 5 failed methods before I found one that worked efficiently. My first method was using a 10cm long dowel, wrapping the paper around it and sellotaping it to secure it. This was inefficient as I would have to hold the paper very tightly to the dowel and it was prone to slipping and creating a straw with too large of a lumen. My second method was using a very long dowel and sellotaping one side of an A3 page to it, preventing the earlier issue. However, I was not able to get the straw off in one piece. My third method was 3D printing a hexagonal prism with an indent in it. I could put the end of the paper into the indent to secure it and wrap the rest of it round, securing it with Sellotape. This failed as the prism was too small and therefore the straws would not fit. My fourth method was 3D printing a larger hexagonal prism. This failed as the prism was too large. My fifth method was 3D printing a hexagonal prism with a size in between the other two. This failed as the paper kept slipping out of the indent. My sixth and final method was 3D printing a prism that was the same size as the previous one, but with a deeper indent. This worked and I was able to efficiently make straws that fit the straw holders.
The third thing I did was assemble the geodesic dome. Firstly, I had to get a lot of straw holders, which I did by 3D printing a full bed of them overnight. Secondly, I had to get a lot of straws, which I did by using the straw maker for around two hours. Finally, I could assemble my dome. I did this by assembling the top part then hanging it from the ceiling so I could work on the bottom until it was stable.
The fourth thing I did was create a nightlight for the “BIG D&T Meet”. Firstly, I had to make a cover. I decided to make a tube of paper. I made this by sellotaping a piece of A3 paper together to form a cylinder. Next, I had to make the light. I did this using a Crumble Mini and a Mini Matrix. I programmed it to fade between colours and loop indefinitely.
The fifth thing I did was create a temperature monitor using the Crumble Mini. I did this by connecting a Temperature crumb to A and a Digits crumb to B and using putting “digits crumb on B : display ( temperature on A in Celsius).
The sixth thing I did was create a more advanced nightlight. Firstly, I used Google to find some images of existing nightlights to take inspiration from. Then, I came up with a design based on a design by Ennio Lucini. To construct my design, I needed to 3D print two blocks of plastic and laser cut two nets of polypropene. To 3D print my blocks, I drew them in Autodesk Fusion 360 and sent them to the 3D printer. To laser cut my nets, I drew them as a sketch in Fusion, exported them as .dxf files, used a USB stick to transfer them to the laser computer, recoloured the lines that should be scored and not cut, then pushed it to the laser. My first attempt failed as the nets were too large. My second attempt partially worked – the bottom net worked, but the top of the top net wouldn’t stay on. My third attempt finally worked as I had made the top of the top net bigger.
