During the past two weeks, the class had been working different projects at Fab Lab. There were three assigned topics: Arduino, Digital Embroidery, and Laser Cutting. By the second week in the lab, the class switched to a new program and continued working with amazing staffs at the lab. My group transferred from using SewArt app to create patterns on fabric to design silhouette on materials like plastic, glass, and wood with Inkscape computer software.

Here is an example of making process of laser cutter.

This is the final look of a design on Inkscape. The piece combines both characters and graphics. The entire designing stage begins from drawing patterns or using existing ones. Then, people may edit dimension, shape, background and so on with the software. Once the design has been set, it was ready to cut.

This shows how the piece was cut with eplloglaser. Before having the machine started, the class were told to turn on fans and gas in order to prevent fire. Laser begins moving and cutting from the left upper corner and it can be adjusted to other places when it is necessary. While laser machine is warming up, we may put materials at the original starting point.

And, this is the completed piece. There was a hole on letter “A”, which was caused at the design stage.

At my fist visit to Fab Lab, it took me a while to find out this entry.

During the weekends, there were two groups of students from our class attended Make-A-Thon event held by CU Maker. Jill and Kavin teamed up with me. We named the team JKLOL? Our project is a bean-like silicon grab helper that aimed to make life easier for the elder with weak  arm muscles. It took us a good amount of time to design, research, collect data, ask professional’s opinion, and finally have it printed. During the process, Jill first came out the idea and did both hand-drawing and computer modeling for the conceptual graphs. Kavin and I joined to the discuss and helped to solve problems. Moreover, Kavin visited Fab Lab back and forth several times to make sure that our model was printed and ready.

Following are photos I took during the Make-A-Thon activity.

This is an inside look of one of the studios at Architecture Annex, which is next to Fab Lab.

The above two are Jill’s hand drawing. It looks even better on the paper.

These two show the way we decided the measurement of our item. We started from collecting the size of each others’ hands. Then, we average the total. The results became the dimension of our first printout.

The last photo from left to right are Kavin, Jill and Dorothy. Dorothy is an expert of project design and materials choosing. Thanks for patiently listened to our presentation and answered our questions.

Overall, it seems like a week full of excitement, creativity, and work for everyone in the class.

This past week, all of our students discovered the incredible resource that is The CU FabLab. This incredible resource found on our campus is open to all students and residents of the Champaign – Urbana community to use and foster their own creative projects. Our class was split up into three groups: arduinos, digital embroidery, and laser engraving.

Arduinos

Arduinos are little, inexpensive computers that can perform simple sensory input and output functions. The open source nature of this product has lead for many programs to be available online, so beginners have a place to start at when looking to design a new function.

Arduino Reference Libraries

Getting Started

One student described their experience as follows:

“So, this time again I worked with arduino at the electronic section. This time I learned two very cool things that can be done with arduino. First, I learned how to install a sensor chip. I made a light bulb to turn off when I cover the sensor and turn on when I don’t cover the senser. The second feature of arduino that I learned was the sound. I installed a sound device on arduino which later I connected to a senser device. So, I was able to control the level of the sound by placing my hand closer or further from the sensor.”

Digital Embroidery

This discipline allows you to take a picture on your computer and turn it into its own embroidered design in the real world. There are obvious limitations of complexity and size, but despite these, this skill is incredibly handy to have, and can even impressing your grandma! There are not that many online resources for digital embroidery, as it is fairly simple once you have a machine.

Sam Bohner described his experience:

“All in all, I really enjoyed today’s class; digital embroidery is pretty cool. It is much faster and takes up less physical labor than hand embroidery. However, there are some drawbacks such as not getting a good quality design. For instance, there was someone who tried to make a playing card and it had too much small detail that it didn’t show up well. The design processes are a bit different, but I think the digital method is much easier.”

Laser Cutting

This workshop is exactly as it sounds, you use lasers to cut various materials that you desire. It is much less dangerous than it sounds, so it is vary easy for beginners to get started crafting their own designs.

Laser Cutting Tutorial

Abby Cross made an incredible journal cover with her time in the lab.

“After seeing how quick and easy it was to create a polished product, I want to look further into the possibility of starting my own Etsy shop for laser engraving journals, phone cases, etc. As we learned with 3D printing, people love the ability of customization, so my shop would provide customers with that option.”

We all have very much to look forward to in the upcoming weeks, and we are excited to get more experience with the FabLab as the course continues!