Before and After transformation of my layers project. No one knew how it would look once it was assembled, including myself. I enjoy even how this simplistic idea, which was also very wood efficient, was able became something more dynamic and complex. One of the challenges was to make sure that the pieces would be able to fit together when turned 90 degrees, which meant I had to take the wood thickness into account.

This is my lantern project, which was doomed to fail from the beginning. I knew it was impossible to create a mini projector, given that the light had to match the rpm of the carousel (neither of which I had a good way of controlling) in order to create an illusion of a galloping horse, but I continued anyway. The Carousel does freely rotate, and as you can see in the picture, It is able to project a picture of a horse. Ultimately, it did not come out perfectly, but it was still a success.

This is my final 3d printed altered toys design, a Butterly knife with the addition of gears as part of its design and function. There is a lot to go over so I’ll do it in steps.

Design- I put gears on the pivots that attach to the blade, as well as the end of the blade. I also added gear designs to one side of the blade because it felt very plain and flat without anything. The blade has a point, but nothing extreme for people to assume it’s dangerous. I chose these colors to further show that this is a toy. The handles are nicely rounded, and have a pattern of dashes and dots, which I used to write my initials in morse code. It’s something that no one would ever notice except the creator which I like.

Function- Everything is 3d printed, the pivots, the bushings, and the gears. The bushings keep the knife away from the handle when in closed position. The pivots are friction fit, but it took so many attempts to make sure they are the perfect size to get a smooth swing of the handles, but also having a minimal amount of play, which was vital to giving it a more quality feel. The gears on the pivots keep the two handles symmetrical with the knife, and the gears on the back are an extra fidget feature.

Manufacture- It was incredibly difficult to print gears at this scale, because it was hard to get it to stick to the surface plate, so the first layer had to be printed very slowly. The 3d printer also affected the shape of the handles, as the bottom had to be perfectly flat. The same reasoning also applies to the knife, where I could only have the design on the top side of the blade, to have a good surface finish on the bottom. I also had to print the pins sideways, so the layer adhesion could be perpendicular to the direction of force, because they always kept breaking otherwise.