This past week was our last session at the Urbana-Champaign Fablab. It was very rewarding to assemble the wooden box design and combine it with my embroidery design. My embroidery design turned out really nicely. I was amazed at how high quality the embroidery turned out. The Illini Logo looked strikingly similar to the original image I modeled it after, and I was very happy with how it turned out!

The next step this week in the FabLab was to design the layout of our circuit. It was important to draw it out before we started stitching. I learned that for the LED lights to work, the positive wires could not cross with the negative wires. In the image below, the squares represent LED light while the lines connecting them represent the magnetic wire that I used to stitch the lights and battery to the embroidery.

Key Takeaways from stitching:

Once I understood how the battery, lights, and wires needed to be placed on the embroidery I began sewing them in by hand. As someone who has never sewed before this course, I learned how much precision and strong fine motor skills it requires.

1) Use Beeswax & Have Patience

One of the hardest parts of sewing is getting started. Threading the needle took me multiple tries and required the use of beeswax. By taking the string and rubbing it against the beeswax, I was able to “thin out” the string and successfully thread my needle.

2) Over-Under through the same stitch

My next big takeaway was to make sure that once I had stitched something onto the embroidery, I needed to take the thread and sew it back through the same stitch. This prevented the string from showing on the design side. It also allowed me to tie the knot on the right side when ending my stitch.

Overall, learning to sew was a unique experience. Unfortunately, I was not able to successfully finish my design during class. Although my I was able to connect my LED lights to the battery, I ended up sewing my lights on backwards. Regardless, it was a neat hand-on making experience these past few weeks! I have learned a ton and am excited to apply what I have learned towards our final project!

This week marked our last class session in the Fablab. Although I won’t be returning in class, I do plan on coming back for advice on my final project. I have been impressed by our instructors over the past 3 weeks. They demonstrated knowledge and experience with different machines and techniques. I was surprised to learn that one instructor, Clinton, was still an undergrad. I’m not sure why, but I assumed that lab staff were either graduate or doctorate students. I applaud people like Clinton for being involved and inspiring others using his passion for digital making.

The third and final mini-project in the FabLab involved sewing LED lights onto the embroidery I made last week. Before sewing, we listened to a brief lecture on series and parallel circuits. I roughly sketched my cloth and a parallel circuit with wiring to help model my design. A parallel circuit connects the positive ends of the two LED lights to the positive end of the battery. The same is true for the respective negative ends. The wiring must be carefully mapped because the electric current breaks when positive and negative wires cross over one another. This may sound simple, but my extended break from physics classes ran me into difficulties.

The sewing materials included a needle, conductive thread made out of steel, two small LED lights, a lithium battery, and the switch. I placed one light at the top of the lighthouse, and the other illuminated the moon. I didn’t want the LED lights to be visible on the white lighthouse and moon, so I placed them under the cloth. Unfortunately, the small lights had trouble shining through the cloth. I will have to alter my design if I want people to notice the lights.

I thought the conductive thread was pretty neat. I never heard of or realized a use for conductive thread before. I also learned that beeswax can help flatten loose ends of thread through the eye of the needle. The biggest challenge was for me was actually sewing. I connected the positive and negative ends, but random bits of thread ruined the aesthetic. Choosing a darker cloth should easily fix that problem.

Reflecting over the past 3 weeks, I have a better understanding of product design. I think this is partially due to the creative freedom we were given, which we have learned is increasingly rare for students. Even though I have made mistakes, I walked away with lessons I can apply to future designs. Mistakes can be just as important as successes from a learning perspective.

Hope you all have a great spring break!

What? 

In week 9, we had the opportunity to put the finishing touches on our boxes. In order to liven up our designs, we strategically sewed a conducive thread into the fabric which connected to our light’s battery. Like other new skills, picking up on the sewing did not come naturally for me. But also like other new skills, I saw myself go from complete novice to fairly competent as the class continued on. As I mentioned in my previous post, I created a baseball field design for my box top, leaving a space for a light on each one of the bases. After working for the entire class, I was ecstatic to see each base lighting up. I credit the lighting success to Clinton and Duncan who walked us through the mapping and building of a circuit, teaching us common errors we would surely make along the way. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of my finished design this time around – and it is left at school until I return from break.

So What?

Adding circuits to our otherwise lifeless designs gives us the power to bring the designs to life. This is certainly a useful skill when it comes to making. The ability to add light allows us to call attention to certain features of a design – such as the bases on my baseball field. Makers can use this skill to their advantage by highlighting critical aspects of their designs and reach their users more effectively. More broadly speaking, our classroom activity shows us that we can animate previously inanimate objects. Using fairly basic technology on 3D printed creations gives us the ability to create something truly unique. (Little did we know when we created our team name, The Animakers.)

Now What?

The first several weeks of this course have been intensive on building new skills – it seems that we’ve learned at least one new skill or software every week since the class has begun. After spring break, we will have the opportunity to take in all that we have learned and use our new skills to create our project. Our team has chosen to make a customizable steering wheel attachment for those who have difficulties turning or steering their vehicle. We are excited to use our newfound skills in 3D printing to make the world more comfortable for our users and safer for the other drivers on the road!

This week was our last Wednesday in the Fab Lab. I really enjoyed the past three weeks in the Fab Lab because it was hands-on learning and experimenting. We learned by “doing”, for example loading a sewing machine with thread colors or sewing LED lights onto fabric. As a class, we were able to develop new skills and learn unique software’s. This introduction to the Fab Lab showed me how much room there is for creativity and imagination in school. My team will definitely utilize the Fab Lab as a resource during our final project.

This week we completed the final stage in our project, which was to sew the LED lights onto our embroidered cloth. We were given a battery pack, a battery, and LED lights. We drew out how we were going to place the lights and battery on the cloth. We were reminded to connect positives together and negatives together to create a functioning circuit. Duncan demonstrated an example of him sewing his cloth. He emphasized that we had to be particular with how we sewed and patient with the process.

At first, I did not understand how we would create an electric circuit with thread. Duncan told me that we were using conductive steel thread, which carried a charge. I thought this was so cool! I did not know this existed. I was excited to start sewing.

I placed my LED lights and battery pack in a circle to ensure no positive and negative circuits crossed paths. Stitching together the pieces was a challenge. It was easy to loose the needle or knot the wrong thread together. Also, I was constantly poking myself!

After carefully sewing on my two LED lights and battery pack I was ready to turn it on. Nervously turning on the control switch I saw one of my green lights flicker on immediately! Woo!! I did it! The light was brighter than I expected and shined through the cloth clearly. Unfortunately, my second light did not work. It was a dud!

Throughout class it was fun watching everyone turn on his or her lights. Everyone’s looked great! I enjoyed seeing what other people in my class designed. Vishal and I spoke about how sewing is a great mechanic to practice. We are always on our phones texting, but this experience we were using our hands in a different way. I thought this was an interesting perspective. This day in the Fab Lab gave our body and mind a break from screens and instead a new challenge using other parts of our brain and body. We were successful in a different way of learning!

This week, we finally got to put our wooden boxes together. These past three weeks have been a wonderful learning opportunity, and it felt good to come up with a finished product. I thought it would be a simple process- put the wooden pieces together, stick a light somewhere on the canvas, switch some button on, and see the pretty light glow on top of a perfectly constructed box. Little did I know, there’s a lot more to it than that.

We first received an introduction from Duncan on how circuits work—the basics of it made sense to me: connect the positive LED side to the positive battery side, and connect the negative LED side to the negative battery side. However, if the two wires touch at any point, it’ll cause the device to short circuit and the light won’t work. In order to make sure that we were connecting the right wires to the right sides, we sketched out where we wanted to sew the LED light and where we wanted to place the battery on our designs. I decided to place the light by the location of my hometown in California:

Once we identified the positioning, we used conductive thread to actually sew the various components onto the canvas. I think I speak for everyone when I say that this was a challenge. After 30 minutes of trying to tug the thread through the canvas and trying to tie knots to hold the finished stitches in place, I was finally ready to test out the light by inserting the battery. On my first attempt, I couldn’t get it to work and I was terrified that I had crossed the wires accidentally—it turns out that a part of the thread was touching the metal portion of the battery where it shouldn’t and that was causing it to malfunction. Once I moved the thread over, my LED lit up and the box was complete:

If there’s anything I’ve learned throughout these past few weeks, it’s that I should be patient with technology, and with myself. I came into this workshop with the expectation that the machines would take care of everything, but in reality, there is still a ton of trial and error that goes into making anything worthwhile.

This week at the Champaign-Urbana community fab-lab, we finally got to put all our skills together from the last couple weeks. Firstly, I was able to assemble my laser-cut wooden box from one week ago – it connected together relatively easily! I loved how it turned out, with a simple lion silhouette on one side and my embroidered design on the front. It slid right over the box, using the square wooden holder I had printed.

Next though, was the most interesting part of the project so far – the circuitry. The fab lab instructors went around and handed us each LEDs (light emitting diodes were first invented at the University of Illinois), a controller switch, and a small disc battery. He explained some general principles of circuitry and currents to us – and the difference between continuous and parallel circuitry. Those frustrating Christmas lights finally made sense! We were all excited when we were first able to get the LED to shine by connecting the right contacts to the controller.

Next, using our intermediate knowledge of sowing circuitry into our canvases, we drew out the schematic of what our stitches would look like. It was like playing a puzzle game – you had to complete the circuit without letting any oppositely charged lines touched. I drew the head of my lion on a page and mapped out where I wanted my circuitry to connect. I realized that I did not have to send every thread back to the battery, but could continue them on to a similarly charged node at another LED, and then send it back (see design below). This saved me a lot of headache in stitching and made the design more efficient.

The actual stitching part was much more difficult than I anticipated. We used conductive steel thread to ensure that a charge was carried. I had a lot of trouble threading this coarse thread into the needle – and found out in class that beeswax serves a lot more purposes than I had initially thought. I decided to leave my LEDs on the outside of my lion, to give it a more mechanic/hybrid look. I didn’t spend as much time as I should have stitching – if I could redo it, I would have made much more stitches, and hidden any excess thread from the front of my lion – but you can’t tell from far away. I felt like an engineer when I had finished my threading, the controller, LED, and battery was in place. Finally, the moment of truth – I held my breath and flicked the controller switch to “on”, letting a current run from the battery, through the thread, to the LEDs, and back.

My lion’s eyes blinked to life! It looked even more aggressive than I thought with it’s contrasting pink/purple light. I completed the entire box and cut off the excess canvas around the corners. I absolutely loved how it turned out. My mom will definitely put it next to all my other ‘art’ projects from school,  except this one is actually decent. I learned a lot from these past 3 weeks of hands-on making – my favorite portion of the class so far!