Day 8

Day 8- Design and Fabrication 

The class period began with Mr. Gotterson, coming in and explaining to us how acrylics and plastics are molded. He demonstrated it by putting a piece of plastic into a toaster oven to unmold itself. When the plastic became hot and malleable, he ran it under cold water to set the new shape.

After that, we learned how to use a scroll saw, a hack saw, and a drill press.

This is a scroll saw. This can be used to cut intricate curves in wood. It is very important to hold the edges of the wood down firmly, as the scroll saw can cut very easily. 

              

This is a hack saw. This tool is useful for cutting straight through pieces of wood. When using the hack saw, it is crucial to hold down the corners of the wood so it will not move around. It can be dangerous for the user if the wood is not held down properly.

                                               

This is called a drill press. It is a machine-tool used to drill holes into pieces of wood. When using this tool, it is very important that nothing gets caught in it. Things like shirtsleeves and hair can easily get stuck in the drill press, so it is crucial to roll sleeves and tie long hair back.

                                                        

We also learned how to use a drill. The picture below is an example of how not to hold a drill. It is tilted at an angle, which can cause the drill to tip over easily.

                                                        

The picture below is the right way of holding a drill. Compared to the last picture, the drill is held at an angle that is much straighter. It is important that this is done slowly and precisely for the best results.

                                                             

The rest of the class period was spent practicing using the tools, and reprinting our kamon designs. Overall, today was a very productive and educational day.

Day 7

Day 7: Design and Fabrication

Today was a whole day of continuing the process of cutting out our crest with the laser cutter. 

We were divided into groups of 3 or 4, and used 3 laser cutters at once so that we don't waste time. 

However, there were still some technical difficulties when cutting out our crest, so some of us didn't finish. 

The people who finished got feedback from their partner and took that feedback to make their design even better. This next design would be our final design, so next class, we would recut them with the laser cutter for our final product. 

Day 6

Day 6: Design and Fabrication

At the beginning of class, we had 15 minutes to finish our first family crest (Kamon) design. 

 After finishing our crest, Mr. Neale showed us a blog site for all the instructions on 3D printer and other machines in CAD building. We had to read the instruction on ourselves to set up our design. 

 Then we started importing our Adobe Illustrator files to 3D printer. But the 3D printer didn’t work so no one got their crest printed out. In the next class, we will split into 2 groups to start playing around with some hand tools. 

Day 5

Day 5: Design and Fabrication lab

Today in our class we worked on our Kamon, especially getting our current sketches into Adobe Illustrator. 

Some people also worked on improving their sketches and furthering their creations before putting their rough draft into Adobe Illistrator.

Mr. Neale also showed us how to make repeating patterns in a shape (in this picture its the border) on Adobe Illustrator to help us build on our designs and to make them seem more like a real Japanese family crest.

Day 4

       

         

Day 4: 
Design and Fabrication

              

          Today we worked on our rough drafts for our family crests (kamon). 

          On a 12 cm diameter circle we sketched out many diverse designs designated to our partners that we have interviewed. Without using the adobe illustrator app on our computers we first used paper to sketch our basic ideas.

          Mr. Neale also went around the class to give us individual advice on our designs. Everyone else was discussing about designs with each other.

                                     

Day 3

Today in D-Fab with Mr.Neale we learned how to use the pen and pencil tools for Adobe Illustrator by watching two videos on it. We practiced using these tools first by using the pencil tool to create a face



Then we used both the pen and pencil tool to create a vehicle from a science fiction



At the end of our class we made a google slide portfolio to show our progress on our family crest project.


 In the slide show we had to write about what we learned about the other person, and the concept of our crest(symbols and design notes)

Day 2

Today in class we learned how to use Adobe Illustrator. At the beginning of class, our goal was to be able to navigate through Adobe Illustrator with ease. We used many tools to get come comfortable with Adobe like Pathfinder and the Shape tools. Mr. Neil would show us how to do something and then we'd get to play around with it.  Overall it was a pretty fun and educational day.

Day 1

Today we were introduced to ”家紋 (kamon) ”, Japanese family crests.
 
We started working on our first project, which is to create an individual kamon for somebody else in the classroom, by interviewing each other about what we like.




After that, we began to sketch ideas of kamon on a piece of paper.



Also, we installed Adobe Creative Cloud on our macbooks to use Adobe Illustrator.

The key to this project is going to be empathy and perseverance.